


What Comes After?

by velvetvenus



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Boatbaby (Game of Thrones), Canon Divergence, Jonerys, Post Season 7, season 8 fix-it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2020-01-09
Packaged: 2020-07-11 10:07:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 45,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19926322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/velvetvenus/pseuds/velvetvenus
Summary: This story takes place after season seven, and is written to replace the travesty that was the eighth season of Game of Thrones. So, essentially, this is my version of what I believe should have happened. It will start off as a rewrite for S8, and then eventually it may transition into an original story after I’m finished with that.





	1. Sleep Well

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Welcome to my own little literary corner of the web! As I said in the summary, this is what I believe should have happened in season eight. Although it may start off a bit slow, I promise that eventually I’ll get to the good shit. The first part of the chapter is told from the perspective of an original character, but everything else from the second part on will be the characters we know and love. Also, I’m still not completely happy with this first chapter, as there was still so many more details I wanted to include. However, I was afraid that if I continued to add stuff and tweak it for days on end that it would never get published. 
> 
> I look forward to hearing what you all think. Happy reading, pals!

**I. Fern**

The shop’s front windows were hard to look through due to the worst weather to spread across Westeros in hundreds of years, but that didn’t stop Fern from trying. She knew that the royal party would be arriving sometime soon, and she wasn’t going to let her young age stop her from watching the king and queen pass through her very own road.

Eight is a small number. It becomes an even smaller number when it is used to describe a person’s age. Eight years is not a terribly long time, but it’s certainly not enough time to experience all of the world’s wonders. That is precisely why Fern, the cobbler of Wintertown’s daughter, decided that she was going to take in all of the royal immaculateness with her friend, Blythe.

The two young girls scaled the sides of the old stone building that housed Fern’s family’s business, which at the moment, was filled to the brim with orders to fill before the coming war. Fern reflected back to earlier in the morning when her father was discussing Winterfell’s future guests.

“The King will be appreciative of all the extra hours we have worked for him, Fern. I know what it is to have a sound pair of shoes to wear to battle. These that we’re repairing here,” he said as he held up a pair of shoes, “these are trusty and ready for wear now. Even though my name won’t be written in the history book that will surely be written about this war, I’m still proud to be able to do my part. The king was always kind when he came in as a young lad doin’ business for his father. An honorable man, Ned Stark, right to the very end. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, Fern.”

As she turned her attention back to the side of the building, she grasped the last stone needed to pull herself up onto the shop’s roof. She looked over the hillside as her friend made her way to her side, yet she saw nothing. Minutes of wait brought bone chilling temperatures to the two girls’ tiny bodies. However, just as they were about to admit defeat, opting to watch the festivities from the small holes visible through the ice on the shops windows, a horn sounded.

Excitement rippled through the two young friends as they turned their gazes to the ribbon of men falling swiftly into the town’s gates.

“I thought the queen would be up front! I told you she was going to fly in on her dragon!” sighed Blythe in a huff of desperation. Fern knew that she too, had never seen a queen. Let alone a queen that had two dragons.

“Mother says when Queen Cersei arrived in Winterfell the last time, before I was born, that she rode in last. Maybe they save the best for last.” Fern explained.

After the army of men with spears passed, Fern laid her eyes on the most curious army she had ever seen. These soldiers were unlike any others that she had seen. Some even had hair that fell down past the stomachs of their horses. The soft chime of bells scattered through the town when the men past, as the wind whipped into their braids.

Riding on a horse as silver as her hair sat the woman that brought much talk to a little town. Daenerys Targaryen exuded other-worldly beauty, that much was for sure. As she and the king in the North weaved their way through the narrow street that was nestled between droves of people, Fern could not make sense of some of the things that she had heard in recent weeks. Although her parents remained steadfast in their support for their Northern leader and his chosen queen, others who came into their shop were not so apt to agree.

Just two days ago, old woman Hertha, five doors down, talked of the Queen and her brother. “I was a supporta’ ov Rhaegar. Aye, I was, ya know. Thought there was no betta chance for us northern folk than ‘avin him rule down south! But… Rhaegar fell at tha Trident, an ova twenty years ‘ave come an gone. The girl ain’t been raised ‘ere. She brings wiva nothin’ but trouble, may I say. If it’s true what they say, three dragons sure as ‘ell won’t help. Our little world ain’t seen the likes of ‘em in years. ‘Nd dragons helped conquer the Norf before. I bet they ain’t lost the ability to do so ta tha likes of us again.”

The woman riding before Fern looked upon Westeros and its people with kind eyes, as far as she, a girl of eight could tell. Fern wished that she had the beauty that the queen had. She wished she had a king she could ride into Winterfell with. Fern was sure that if she wished hard enough, perhaps she would meet Queen Daenerys one day by the time she was older. That way she, like her mother, could tell her children tales of the time the last Targaryen heir rode into Winterfell.

Just as Fern knew it would, the magic came to an end, leaving in its path the back of the Queen. Her braids rested upon the most magnificent winter coat Fern had ever laid her eyes upon. It was the deepest shade of red imaginable, with a scaled looking pattern that reflected the sun, giving off a pearlescent glow to those in its’ wake. The train of it, which partially flowed onto the tail of the white horse, was lined with ruby colored gemstones which peaked from beneath the lining of the warm looking fur.

The voices of the crowd grew quieter into mixed whispers, and just as everyone had made the decision to begin the walks back to their homes, a loud, snow-filled breeze breathed its’ way through the town. Carrying that breeze underneath of their large wings were the largest creatures Fern had only ever dreamed of her eyes beholding. Tales of Aegon and his three dragons were told around the fires of people’s homes, but with so many years past, some had even begun to wonder if that part of history had been stretched as no living soul had ever seen one, and Valyria and its’ magic seemed to be long dead.

Blythe glanced at Fern, with each mirroring the others face almost perfectly. It was an unspoken moment shared between the two. This was one of those rare times in a child’s life where there were no words to describe what their young eyes had seen. Some might have chalked it up to a still growing vocabulary if it weren’t for the fact that the men and women grown were speechless as well.

**II. Daenerys**

As her dragon flew overhead, Daenerys was filled with a sense of pride. Even still, it did little to settle the sense of dread that had remained with her since she stepped off the boat at White Harbor. As she eyed her way through a crowd full of strange people, her people now, Daenerys recognized little that she had seen before. The comparable differences to back east, even south, were not hard to miss. She saw a hard country, with people that looked at her with even harder looking expressions.

“Well, this is a warmer welcome than I had expected from the northerners,” Ser Jorah admitted, quietly. “We’re getting closer to the castle, but still ride close, Your Grace. Even though the crowds look to be cordial, it only takes one hero with one arrow,” he grunted disdainfully.

“Are you saying that a man with an arrow aimed at me would be a hero, Ser Jorah?” Daenerys asked with a light tone.

“No, no, no… that is not what I meant for you to---,” he exclaimed.

“Ser Jorah, I am only jesting. I suppose I shouldn’t have assumed that a man who has survived having greyscale removed from his entire body and is presently riding into yet another war, would be quick to joke anymore.” The two rode in a familiar silence for a moment. Daenerys loosened the grip on her reins slightly, saying, “I can’t tell you how happy I am that it is you still riding by my side to this day. We have come a long way since the green of the Dothraki Sea. I am thankful for your friendship. More than you will ever know, Ser Jorah.”

Daenerys glanced slightly to the side, but she caught enough of the pain in Jorah’s eyes to know that she had said too much. She knew that these were words that pained him more than exile or greyscale ever had, as these were words that promised friendship and nothing ever more. As these thoughts settled with her, Daenerys shifted uncomfortably on her saddle as she pondered what might have been if she could have been content with Jorah’s love and nothing more all those years ago.

She felt Jon’s leg brush against hers as they rode alongside each other. She knew that this was his way of sensing her discomfort, while trying to ease it the best that he could, in the company they were in. She thought to herself how strange it was that he, a man she had only known for a few moons, was able to see her in a way that no man before ever had. Of course, she did have to remind herself of the conversation they had during one of the long nights they spent sailing together. Jon had told her of a past love he felt he had betrayed, and in turn, Daenerys told him of the guilt she had felt for years towards Jorah. She knew that by his small gesture, Jon hadn’t forgot their conversation, either.

“It’s just a couple minutes more, Your Grace. I can promise that although it’s cold now, a southerner like you will warm right up once you’re within the walls of the castle. That is if the heat from the hot springs beneath it hasn’t frozen over since I left,” Jon, said.

As the snowy terrain passed them by, Daenerys thought to herself that it would be hard for anyone to deny the North its’ beauty. While she never learned about the North at length as a child, she imagined it to be a very free and idyllic place to grow up.

Trotting through the snow covered hillsides, with the sun slowly making its’ way down, Daenerys looked at Jon and knew that she had been right.

**III. Arya**

The castle at Winterfell was filled to the brim with people walking and running every which way, trying to create more space where there was none. In just the past three days alone, people had arrived from Last Hearth, Deepwood Motte, Torrhen’s Square, and the Dreadfort. These people only joined the thousands of other refugees that had slowly been trickling in over the past few weeks.

Arya played with the point of Needle as she leaned against the doorway, watching Sansa work herself up into a tizzy trying to perfect everything.

“Sansa, it’s Jon. He’s our brother. He grew up here, and this is his home. He knows this isn’t the Red Keep. I’m sure that the Queen is aware of that fact, as well. And if she wasn’t before she got to the North, she sure as hell is now,” Arya scoffed. “You’ve made sure that the food supplies are plenty, you’ve made sure that the forgers have started their work like Jon asked, you’ve readied everything you can. Hell, today alone, I’ve seen you triple check things.”

For a moment, Arya thought that Sansa had ignored her as she never stopped fiddling with the candlesticks that she had been counting. Arya pivoted to turn away, opting to find company that could match her own joy about the “King in the North” returning. Before she could leave, she heard a nearly inaudible noise come from her older sister.

“She’s not our Queen.” Sansa lifted her heard with a newfound confidence that she seemed to be short of only moments ago when they spoke of war preparations.

“I wouldn’t say that to her face, you know. I haven’t heard much about the Dragon Queen, but I am familiar with the basic idea of a ruler, and it’s generally considered smart to not deny them to their faces. Besides, Jon bent the knee. If I know him, he must have faith that she is the leader to get us through this.” Arya insisted.

“That’s just it, Arya! You don’t know him. Not anymore. You weren’t with us!” Sansa’s face softened as she looked down towards her sister. “I just meant that you can’t exactly expect him to be the same boy he was when he left. He still cares about us, I know he does. But that’s the problem… he cares too much. He sacrificed a large portion of our army when he decided to run after Rickon. If he had listened to me when I told him that saving Rickon was a lost cause, many men would still be alive today. Jon’s weakness as a commander in war is that he cares too much about things that are out of his control.” A deep silence fell between the two sisters before it was broken by Sansa, whose voice was barely above a whisper. “He cared too much to let the wildings get killed beyond the wall, and because of it he got himself killed instead. If he’s started to care for the dragon queen in a time of war, it explains why he’s bent the knee.”

Arya’s faced pinched inwards, causing it to turn her considerably more red. “Jon wouldn’t let himself be manipulated by her! If he’s bent the knee, there must be a good reason. A good reason that I suspect he will inform us of once he’s here. You’re speaking for him, making assumptions when he’s been gone for months. You haven’t a clue as to what has taken place. Nobody does.”

“Exactly! No one knows anything. For months while Jon’s been gone, I’ve been here alerting all our people to the coming storm. I’ve been gathering all the able bodies that I can to fight alongside us. I’ve been harvesting food in the event of shortages. I’ve been here in our home with our people, while Jon’s been down south giving that very same home away.” Sansa grabbed a sack of grain off of the ancient wooden floorboards and walked away.

Several minutes later, Arya still stood against the doorway, with only her thoughts to keep her company.

**IV. Sansa**

Snow trickled softly down from the sky before resting on the ground. Sansa heard the crunch of it under her feet as she walked into the courtyard. A feeling of melancholy washed over her as she stood in the same exact place that she stood with her family, all those years before. In many ways, standing here left Sansa with a bittersweet sensation. The last time a southern king or queen visited Winterfell, Sansa stood here in the company of her entire family. Her father had still been the Lord of Winterfell, her mother was still around to comfort her as only a mother could, Robb was still a boy that liked sparing with their brothers, and Rickon was still so very tiny. That day was among the last that they would spend together, and she frequently admonished herself for not appreciating the warmth of her childhood while it still was around her.

She felt her brother, Bran, roll himself quietly to her side. She wondered if this was as emotional for him as it was for her. She supposed not. It would be too much to hope otherwise, this she knew. Even still, she didn’t fault him. They all were far from the children they once were, and even further from the adults they would have turned into, had nothing ever changed. Sansa wasn’t sure if she felt peace with that, or not.

As the last of the queen’s men took their places outside of the gate, the queen herself was crossing through it on a horse as white as the snow. Sansa looked to her brother Jon, who while sitting on his horse, only had his eyes focused on Bran. It wasn’t a second’s dismount before he was crouched in front of their little brother, searching for anything remaining of the boy he had to leave behind in his sickbed all those years ago.

“Bran?” Jon choked out. “You’re grown. A man compared to the day I left. Where have the years taken you brother?” Jon looked as relieved to see Bran as he had not long ago when Sansa had her own reunion with him.

“Brandon Stark has been all over the realm. Where he isn’t or hasn’t been would be the true question.” Bran replied. It was just as she had thought. She liked it when she proved herself right, but not this time. This time all it did was make her heart ache.

She knew the look that Jon was giving Bran, all too well. She had seen him receive it many times since his return from those who knew him before. She supposed she too had given it to him herself, though she’d like to think she had better self-control.

As she wrestled with her inner-thoughts, the queen stepped in line with Jon before them. She had heard tales of the dragon queen’s beauty, but none of them truly did her any justice. She looked exactly like the Targaryen queens that Sansa had read about as a child. As Sansa looked towards her, she spotted Lord Tyrion in the background’s commotion. It had been a few years since she had seen her husband. Although that hardly seemed like the proper title for him, Sansa knew of little else to call their situation. While theirs’ certainly hadn’t been a long marriage, it would leave them much to discuss in the coming days, she was sure.

Sansa stepped forward to embrace her brother. As she tightened her grip around his shoulders, the fur of his jacket brushed up against her cheek, for a short time shielding her face from the harsh winds of winter that had finally made its’ way to Winterfell. Once she had stepped back, her brother greeted her with a warm smile. “Lady Sansa, this is Queen Daenerys of House Targaryen. Your Grace, this is my sister Lady Stark.”

“Lady Stark, I have heard tales of the North’s beauty. However…” she paused, “it doesn’t begin to compare to what you have accomplished here in such a short time. It’s a beautiful thing to be able to witness the people of our realm gathering together to fight a common enemy. We have Winterfell and the Starks to thank for giving us safe shelter in the war to come.” A diplomatic answer, Sansa would give her that. She knows because it is precisely the one she would have given, had the roles been reversed.

“There is no need to thank us, Your Grace. The North has long been a protector of its’ people. It would be nice if the Seven Kingdoms could say the same,” Sansa replied. The statement had left her mouth. Whether it was the most diplomatic answer was certainly to be debated. However, she felt that she had to let the queen know where she stood from the beginning. Sansa would not rest until the North had its’ independence. Her family had lost too much fighting for it for her to stop their cause now.

“Yes, and we can thank Cersei for that. I’m sure that is something we can both agree on,” the queen replied, as she stood straighter. “Lord Tyrion tells me you spent many years in the capital. I don’t think I have to explain to you the many reasons that I have made my long journey home to unseat her.”

“Very little time is needed with Cersei to know the person she is. No one knows that more than I do,” Sansa paused. “The North welcomes you, Your Grace.”

The queen looked vexed as she turned to Bran to begin the rest of the introductions. This left Sansa with a feeling of satisfaction. The feeling, however, had already begun to fade. As Sansa stood with a pretty Lady smile on her face, tuning out the rest of the chatter, she began to wonder why she didn’t feel more joy. By all accounts, she had accomplished all she hoped she would have in their first conversation. She had relayed her feelings, albeit subdued, on matters concerning the queen’s journey north. She hadn’t muttered pretty little words to the queen, unlike her mother to Cersei all those years ago. On top of it all, they remained cordial throughout the whole ordeal. Sansa had a feeling it remained that way, mainly for Jon’s sake. However, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was amiss.

**V. Davos**

The Great Hall, from wall to wall, was crammed full of people. There wasn’t an inch free down below the main table that wasn’t occupied by citizens. People from far and wide had gathered into the space to air their concerns, or to just join in the hubbub. Ser Davos hadn’t been back long, but already he noted how much the place felt like home to him. He was a far cry from a green boy, and his days of middle-age, too, were behind him. He spent the majority of his years as a smuggler in Flea Bottom, afterwards coming to advise Stannis Baratheon in his quest for the crown. Even still, neither Flea Bottom nor Dragonstone, ever felt as comforting as Winterfell at the moment.

Comfort was an odd feeling to behold at that particular point in time, as one could expect if they, too, were biding their time against an undead army. As Davos looked out into the hordes of people, in their faces he saw many things. He saw worry, he saw fear, anger, and love, but no matter where he looked, he saw no other person keeping comfort. He wondered if this current state of temporary bliss was a result of his growing age.

Suddenly, his attention was drawn back to the conversation at hand.

“Your Grace… My Lord… whatever it is that you wish for us to call you on this day, let me remind you that we sent you south to retrieve dragonglass. We wanted nothing more, and expected even less. We did not, however, send you to pledge fealty to another’s cause,” Lord Glover paused, and Davos saw that he thought hard before he spoke next. “My Lady of House Targaryen, while we are thankful that you would bring us your armies and your dragons, the North is a strong fortress. If using your resources means that we have to bend the knee to your cause, then I speak on behalf of House Glover when I say, that we prefer to take our chances on the battlefield.”

The room erupted into shouts of “Aye!”, while the sounds of cups beating off the tables vibrated off the walls. Tyrion turned his head to exchange an unapproving glance with Davos, who at the moment was feeling a lot less at home. A little ways away, Davos saw that Queen Daenerys was feeling similarly.

“My Lords, when I spoke of a great enemy, I meant the worst kind. The unknowable enemy that was so terrifying as children, we all thought it was only in the stories. The impending threat from the dead is real and our chance of survival is already questionable at best.” Davos watched as Jon stepped down from his chair, and into the crowd. “Listen, I can’t promise you that Queen Daenerys’ dragons are going to keep the dead at bay. I can’t promise you that her armies are going to keep your children alive. I can promise you,” he paused, “that they’re the best chance we have in this fight. Let us not dwell on past animosities. For the sake of those who come after us, let us be better than those that have come before us. We fight together or we die together, there is no other way friends,” the former King in the North, begged.

While his speech seemed to tame flaring tempers for the time being, Davos knew it was only a temporary fix. It seemed as if Sansa Stark was also aware of this, as she made her way up from her chair.

“Jon, our people are wanting answers. All they are asking is that they will not have to fight for the queen when she takes King’s Landing. They’re not asking too much.” Sansa stated with her hands in the air.

Before Davos had even realized what he was doing, he was looking directly into the eyes of hundreds of strangers. Strangers, who, were simply being shuffled around and all they wanted was answers.

“Ladies and Gentleman, I can’t speak to the future. Wouldn’t that be the day, if I could. I’d tell you if all the squabbling that’s happening amongst ourselves would be worth it in the end. But, be that as it may, I can only speak to the things I am positive of. You sent Jon Snow south because you trusted him to lead you. Queen Daenerys lost a dragon saving your chosen king, sacrificing its’ life for the good of everyone standing here today. Jon Snow trusts her judgement, and you trust him. The fate of the North doesn’t need to be ironed out in a night.” Davos stepped back, and hoped that he didn’t say too much out of turn. By the appreciative look on Jon’s face, he assumed not. By the bitter look on Sansa’s face, he’s feared so.

With a period of peace reached, at least for the night, everyone decided that sleep would be better enjoyed after a nice hot meal and good company. As Davos looked around the slowly emptying room, he thought to himself what an odd thing life was. Here he was, getting ready to embark in a battle alongside several past enemies. However in the end, Davos surmised that Jon Snow was right; nothing else mattered, as they were all breathing.

**VI. Jaime**

Jaime’s face was chapped from the violent winds that had reigned down in a constant rush since he’d left King’s Landing. He’d been on the King’s Road for weeks now, and even though the grueling journey was almost over, Jaime found himself wishing that he had weeks left to ride.

What would the honorable Jon Snow say when he tells him that Cersei would not be marching her army north? Would the Mad Queen’s daughter burn him on the spot? As much as he had tried, for weeks to keep his fears at bay, Jaime was finally starting to crack. However, if he was ever sure of one thing, it was that he couldn’t sit out another life-altering war. The Mad King had forced him to stay back as a hostage in the Red Keep, refusing to allow him to fight alongside Rhaegar, while Robert and his heathens tore their way through the Kingdom. He had never felt as useless as he had back then. Even as a Kingsguard in the Red Keep, he couldn’t stop Elia Martell’s or their children’s brutal fates. In the end, he was made to be the biggest monster of them all, the dreadful Kingslayer, with shit for honor.

Now, many years and another war later, he was nearly finished with his journey North to beg the Mad King’s daughter for forgiveness. The irony of the situation certainly had occurred to him several times throughout his journey. Currently, he was riding toward the physical evidence of all his life’s treachery. The most surprising factor in all of it being, that if he somehow made it out of their first meeting alive, that evidence would be his allies. Eight years ago, Bran Stark and Daenerys Targaryen would have seemed like the most unbelievable of allies. If only his father could see them now. The almighty Lannisters at opposite sides of a war, with one son serving as Hand of the Queen to the last Targaryen. The thought brought a smirk to his face, but it quickly dissipated as the expression stung his frozen skin and cracked lips.

And yet, that was never how he wanted to leave Cersei. It was true that the woman he’d left behind was a shell of the young girl he had once fallen in love with, but how could she be? What mother could watch all of her children die throughout the years and not be emotionally decimated? What made Cersei unique, however, was her ability to turn her pain into other people’s greater suffering. Since her tenure as Queen in the Red Keep, she had single-handedly murdered hundreds in an explosion of wildfire at the Great Sept of Baelor, and quietly devised many other atrocities resulting In the deaths of others. Yet, who knew all it would take for him to finally leave her, was her not leaving with him?

Even as he pondered it several weeks on, he couldn’t understand why she would be willing to risk the fate of her kingdom, and their child’s life on the North alone. Even out of all of the things Cersei no longer was, she was still a mother. Wasn’t it always she who had said that you should never test a mother’s love as there was no way to measure how deep it went?

As he continued on the snow covered road, his thoughts flashed to another mother he remembered that would have done anything for her children. How strange, Jaime thought, that it was her home he was headed to all these years later.

**VII. Bran**

As Bran sat by the crackling fire, he felt another presence hovering by the doorway of his chambers.

“Come in.”

Samwell Tarly shuffled in the door with several books in his hand. Throughout the books, papers were scattered throughout the pages, sticking out in all directions. In the process of trying to set his books down, Sam knocked over a table, scattering all of his things onto the floor.

As Sam bent down to gather everything, Bran said, “Leave them. The answers you seek aren’t in them anyway.”

Although he couldn’t be sure, Bran thought that the look Sam was giving him meant that something had made him uneasy.

“W-Well, if that’s the case, I-I’m not sure where else to look,” he paused. “It feels as if I’ve read every book in the b-bloody Seven Kingdoms,” stammered Sam. “If that’s not all, I-I’ve been avoiding an old friend the whole day since he’s been back because I feel as if I’m l-lying to him. I’m holding onto a secret that isn’t m-mine. A bloody massive one at that.”

As Bran sat in a comfortable silence, he noticed that Sam fidgeted in his chair.

“I… I have to tell him Bran. If you didn’t want me to, then you never should have told me. But I have a feeling you knew that already.”

“You can tell him Sam, but not until the time is right. I will tell you when the moment reaches us.” With that, Bran relaxed back into his wheelchair, grey clouds in place of where he had been just been staring at the fire moments before.

**IIX. Jon**

“I assume you were off attending to important business, earlier.” Jon stated simply as he walked into Arya’s chambers.

The room still looked the same as it had the last time he’d been there. As he slowly paced around the room taking in all of his surroundings, Jon wondered if Arya would remember the flimsy little sword he had given to her as children. He hoped that she had at least gotten some use out of it before Father found it, and undoubtedly took it from her.

“Urgent. We have a queen visiting, you know?” Arya turned on her heels to face her brother, on her face the cheeky grin he knew she would have.

As the two embraced, Jon realized that now, he truly felt at home. Growing up, he was close with his siblings. At least the closest a bastard could hope to get to their trueborn siblings. However, the bond that he had shared with his youngest sister, the other outsider of the family, had always been the closest.

“We thought you were dead, kid.” Jon said, as he loosened his grip.

“Last I heard, you were dead, and I’m not a kid anymore. I’m a woman.” She bragged confidently.

As Jon stared at his sister, it didn’t take him long to notice the considerable difference in her appearance since the last time he had seen her. In place of the little sister on her way to King’s Landing, stood a woman that was clearly all Stark. Jon softly rejoiced for that fact.

“Aye, you’re not. My mistake, it’s just that I’m having a hard time not picturing the little girl I gave that flimsy little sword to all those years ago.”

“Needle isn’t flimsy. It’s the best gift I’ve ever been given, and you didn’t answer my question,” she said as she punched his arm.

As Jon smiled and rubbed his surprisingly sore arm, he questioned whether or not this was a conversation he wanted to get into this late at night, when they’d only just been reunited. Although he knew it was no longer a secret, his premature death wasn’t necessarily something that he wanted to discuss with his little sister. Having to explain a series of choices that he had made, that in turn got him killed, generally took all of the life out of whatever room he was in. For just once, Jon wanted to pretend that the whole ordeal never happened, and that death wasn’t knocking on all of their doors. But that wasn’t Jon.

“Ask me about it after this is all finished. I promise to tell you everything some other time, but first I’d like to know how you got home,” he wondered.

Arya made her way across the room to sit on the bed. As she traced the grain of wood that made up her bed, Jon thought that he could see a glint of sadness seeping through her hard exterior. However, with Arya, one could never be too sure what she was going to do.

“Ask me about it after this is all finished,” she copied. Although Jon was eager to hear of her travels, he could tell that, like him, it was perhaps information better shared at another time.

“That’s fair,” he smirked. “I, however, do need to ask something else of you.”

Arya’s cheerful face straightened. Jon wasn’t quite sure what made it happen, as he didn’t feel his tone had been as serious as it seemed to be. In fact, he tried to make it not so. As if seeming that their present situation was a comfortable one to be in. Here he was, a man crowned King in the North, sitting in a castle in which he was only previously recognized as the resident bastard. His life was never dull, he was sure of that.

“I need to ask something of you. Not as a king, but as a brother.” The conversation was clearly uncomfortable for him, as he lowered his head before he spoke next. “I… I need you to be the bridge between Sansa and Daenerys. I’m not asking you to kneel before her or to kiss her ass, but I am asking that you extend certain hospitalities to her that I feel certain Sansa will fall short on. I’m not asking you to be the Lady of Winterfell, but I would appreciate it if you were to just extend a kindness to her.”

“Extend a certain kindness to her,” Arya mocked. “How much time did you spend south, again?” She let out a light laugh and turned to Jon, who was feeling his muscles tighten by the second. He wasn’t feeling too surprised. He knew that he would face extreme opposition once he returned home with a “foreign invader,” he just never guessed that much of that opposition would come from his own blood.

“Jon, relax.” Suddenly her smile had disappeared, and she made her face show the same sincerity that she was feeling. “I know the pressure that has been placed on you. Frankly, I don’t begrudge you for giving up your crown. It was practical. I’m sure that the queen’s beauty didn’t make it harder for her to persuade you, at least. She seems lovely. At least from a far.” At that, Jon stood up from the bed and walked to stand in front of Arya.

“I didn’t give up my crown. It was never really my crown, I was just the next best thing they had to Robb. I don’t fault them for it, or their anger.” There was a long pause. “I know this is going to sound ungrateful, but if I’m being honest with myself, I don’t miss it at all.”

“You don’t sound ungrateful,” Arya said as she motioned him to sit back down beside of her. “It wasn’t you.”

At that, Jon let out a soft grin. “No, it wasn’t me.”

For the next several minutes the two sat in a familiar silence. If Jon thought hard enough, he could almost hear Old Nan telling stories to them as children. How unbelievable they all seemed to him at the time, with stories of the Others seeming the least probable. Jon wondered what he would say as a child if he was to see himself now. He never imagined he would lay his eyes on a dragon, much less an army of the undead, but Jon had seen them both.

“It wasn’t her beauty that convinced me to bend the knee,” Jon paused. “It was just her.”

**IX. Tyrion**

As Tyrion walked through the grounds of Winterfell, he felt a feeling of peace wash over him. This was a strange feeling for him as of late due to many situations at hand. The most obvious one being an army of the dead. Although, he felt that it was the lesser known situation brewing that was going to decimate all means of progress that they had made over the last few years.

In his experience, love was the downfall of every great leader. That or pride. Love had destroyed Rhaegar just as pride had destroyed Robert in the form of an angry boar. Unfortunately for him, his chosen leader was exhibiting signs of both. If only, he thought to himself, he could make her see what he did. He blamed himself really. The queen chose him to advise her due to his vast knowledge of Westerosi politics; politics that at the moment were being controlled by his own blood. He should have been able to foresee the outcome of summoning Jon Snow to Dragonstone, he thought as he berated himself.

How long he walked, Tyrion couldn’t say. He wasn’t sure if it was how many thoughts that he had racing around in his mind, or if it was the copious amounts of wine that he had consumed since their arrival. In his case, it was seldom the wine. Just as Tyrion had made the rare decision to turn into bed early, he was confronted with the face from a lifetime past.

“I was wondering when we might have the chance to speak,” she said.

“You don’t have to lie to me for my benefit, Lady Sansa. ” he quipped, as he made his way toward her.

Sansa Stark sat at an empty table nursing her own glass of wine. Several glasses of wine, it seemed to him, if the welcoming look on her face was anything to go off of. “I’m being sincere, Lord Tyrion. In fact, I’ve wondered about your whereabouts many times since…,” she trailed off. Although Sansa didn’t finish, Tyrion could surmise what she would have said next.

“That I believe. It’s not every day a woman has the prospect of reuniting with an ex-husband.”

“I wouldn’t know. All of my other ex-husbands are dead,” she stated plainly.

As he searched for a delicate response, Sansa filled the silence once more, saying, “Why are you here?”

Tyrion shifted in his seat at the sudden change of conversation. Although, he considered, sudden may not be the right word to describe their current predicament. To him, this conversation had been a long time coming. Although they didn’t part on the most ideal of circumstances after Joffrey’s wedding, he never would have guessed that she would have believed him to be guilty of the crime that followed it. “I’m innocent, Sansa. While my family is not as nurturing as you Starks, I never would have murdered him. He was my nephew and a child, no matter how much he thought otherwise. You can’t expect me to have lived in exile for a crime I didn’t commit. I had to come back; it’s where my home is.”

“You misunderstand me, Lord Tyrion. I’m not asking why you’ve come back to Westeros, that much is perfectly clear. The Dragon Queen wants to get her revenge on those who have wronged her family.” She stated matter-of-factly. “What I am asking, is why she and her armies didn’t set sail for the Red Keep? If Cersei is her true enemy, as she says, what did she plan to gain from coming here?”

“I think a better explanation for your conundrum, is that you,” he paused for clarity, “misunderstand her. The queen didn’t come to the North to conquer it. It was given to her, by your brother, might I point out. She could have flown to the Red Keep months ago. In fact, she wanted to. We all assumed that by now she would be ruling from the throne that her ancestor’s built. I believe you are very familiar with the chair in which I speak. That, however, cannot be done without losing the lives of thousands innocents that occupy the city. She’s not here to be queen of the ashes, and she doesn’t plan to be. She cares for her people. You would be lucky to have her as your queen. I don’t believe I need to tell you what a massive improvement she will be from the throne’s current occupant.”

Once he had finished speaking, Tyrion noticed that her gaze on him was eerily exact in rigidity to much of the ice that could be found outside the castle’s walls. As he took another sip of his wine, he was posed with the very same question he had asked himself only minutes ago. This time, however, he knew it to be the wine. Seldom, he contemplated, was becoming standard for him it seemed.

“Showing self-restraint and being a step-up from your sister does not make her a good ruler. Robert showed self-restraint, was gentler than Cersei, and he was still an atrocious king. You served them both, in some capacity if I recall correctly. Why should anyone trust your judgement?” Sansa looked directly into his eyes with the very same fortitude as her mother once had.

As Tyrion searched for an answer to the loaded question, it occurred to him that his answer could be found in the most simplistic of terms. “Well she’s here, for one thing. She is here fighting your brother’s war when she could have ignored him. Why shouldn’t she have? The rest of the kingdom has done the same, and I don’t see too many other people offering to help in a situation that almost certainly promises death for us all. And… I know it’s not what you want to hear Sansa, but she cares for her people. While I understand and agree with your opinion that being kind and just doesn’t instinctively constitute a good ruler, I’ve never seen empathy to be a bad thing either. After everything my family has put them through, don’t you think that the citizens of the realm deserve a little empathy after all these years?” Tyrion went for another sip of wine, but found that his cup to be suddenly. “Besides, I know that you may be too youthful to recognize this fact, but compassion and suitability for the throne can be found in the same individual. Queen Daenerys resembles your brother in that respect.”

Whilst Tyrion couldn’t be sure, he thought that he saw the first glimmer of retreat in Sansa’s eyes. “If that’s all, I do have to beg your forgiveness. I believe I’ll turn in now before I can pour myself another cup. I’ve started cutting myself off at four bottles of wine a day, you know. It seems we’ve both done some growing.”

With that, Tyrion made his way up from the table with no objections from Sansa. “Sleep well, Lady Sansa. You’ll need it tomorrow when we tell everyone that in addition to a Targaryen queen arriving, the Lannister army is also marching north to join the fight. While I’ve never seen anyone object to more aide on the battlefield, you Northerners are constantly defying the expected. Or, in this case I suppose it would be the unexpected.”

“You truly believe that Cersei is marching her bannerman here as we speak?” Sansa said incredulously.

While Tyrion knew that Sansa had every right to doubt his sister’s intentions in the past, Cersei understood, perfectly, the situation looming beyond the wall. Promised death for everyone should she choose not to fight alongside them, and possibly death even if she did. “Yes. She’s with child. She has something more to live for now, I believe. Wouldn’t every mother lead an army to protect their children if they could?” Tyrion asked knowingly.

“Sleep well, Lord Tyrion. I expect you’ll be needing it soon, as well.” With that, Sansa exited the room leaving a slightly buzzed and even more confused man behind her.


	2. Joy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Sorry it took me a while to get this second chapter out. I've been trying to plan exactly how I want the next parts of the story to go, and this chapter plays a big part in setting it all up. 
> 
> Hope you all enjoy!

**I. Tyrion**

Once the first light of morning shone into the walls of Tyrion’s chambers, he decided that it was finally an acceptable time to be roaming the halls of the castle. After his decision to turn into bed early the night before, he had hardly been able to sleep even the most miniscule of amounts.

For the life of him, he couldn’t stop thinking about his conversation with Sansa. It was almost as if when she told him to sleep well, she knew that it would have the opposite effect. Out of everyone gathered in Winterfell, she arguably knew him the best. Along with Varys, she was one of the lucky few to have been able to see him at his highs, as well as his very profound lows.

  
As he slowly walked his way through the stony halls, he began to feel less than. Less than was not a new concept to him, as that is how others had viewed him his entire life. He was less than Jaime in his father and sister’s eyes. Being a dwarf made him eternally less than in the eyes of the realm and the majority of its’ people. However, maybe for the first time in his life, Tyrion was sure that they were all right.

After walking around with a glass of wine in his hand aimlessly for the better part of an hour, he found himself in the most fitting of places. The library at Winterfell was more impressive than he imagined it would be. As he walked between shelves, slowly brushing his fingertips against the spines of the books as he walked past them, he saw books that were rare and several hundreds of years old. If he didn’t already have plans for the day, he did now. Tyrion decided that a thick book was exactly what he needed to feel like himself again.

Once he had chosen his reading material, he made his way over to a long table to settle in for the day. He was sure that in all of the commotion, very few would notice his absence. As he flicked his way through the old pages, he felt a feeling of serenity wash over him. Then, faintly, from the other side of the room, Tyrion heard whispers.

In all his self-pity, Tyrion hadn’t even considered the possibility that he might not have been alone in there. However, as he listened closer he heard two men speaking in hushed voices.

“This is the way it must be, Samwell. I’ve known for quite some time. When the time comes, you must help him make peace with the situation,” said a low, steady voice.

Suddenly the voices stopped, and Tyrion became more curious. Just as he was about to try to get a closer listen, an unfamiliar voice sounded from behind the bookshelves.

“Normally I’d think it’s a bit early for wine, but I heard Lady Stark stocking multiple casks of it for you a few days ago. You’re considered quite the connoisseur around these parts, I would assume,” the young man said through a gap in the shelf.

Walking towards Tyrion was a man about five times as large as him, and in his hands he carried a heavily populated armful of books.

“I’m touched,” Tyrion said as he rubbed his temples. “but even for a connoisseur it would be considered early,” he said as he sat down his book. “Since you know my name, I feel it’s only reasonable you tell me yours, as well.”

“I-I’m Samwell Tarly, My Lord. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. I’ve heard a little about you from my friend Jon. King Jon,” he stated, correcting himself. “Though, you can just call me Sam. Everyone else does.”

Tyrion shifted in his seat slightly. “Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, as well.” It would have been an even greater pleasure to have been sitting here with him had the queen not roasted his father and brother, presumably, only weeks ago. Did he know? Tyrion quickly assumed not as the man didn’t seem to hold any resentment towards him. He decided it best not to ask about his family, as ones from high houses usually did when meeting for the first time. Instead, he opted for a more light-hearted approach.

“What brings you to the library this early in the morning, Sam?”, asked Tyrion. “Usually this is the farthest place from where others choose to be,” he added, as not to sound too intrusive. Especially since he wasn’t sure if Sam knew he had been listening to his whispers.

Sam sat at the table across from Tyrion with a look of defeat and bags the color of storm clouds under his eyes.

“W-well, I suppose it’s going to sound pretty stupid to you, but since you’re asking, I’m trying to find a way to beat the Night King.” Sam started laughing. “Not that it makes much a difference now, after months of reading I haven’t found anything.” he said, still chuckling. “You’ll have to forgive me. It’s just that I’ve been up all night reading and I’m fairly certain that the lack of sleep has made me a bit hare-brained. I’ll be off here in a couple of minutes once I’ve put all the books back, so you’ll be able to get back to yours in peace,” said Sam.

To anyone else, the boy’s ramblings might have sounded like the utterances of a mad man. To Tyrion, it made perfect sense to seek solace from those that had come before them. He supposed in his own way, that is what he himself had been doing when he walked in here.

“No, actually. I’m now far more interested in what you’re reading.” Tyrion said as he settled more comfortably into his chair. He predicted the two of them would be in here for some time. “Have you found anything close so far?”

**II. Daenerys**

Daenerys woke up feeling extremely fatigued, and not even a hot bowl of porridge was enough to give her more energy. She had spent her entire life in warmer climates, so she hadn’t ever considered just how much the cold weather could take its’ toll on a person.  
After she had finished her breakfast, she set off to find Jon. The two of them hadn’t had much of a chance to speak since their arrival, and as embarrassing as it was to admit to herself, he was her only source of comfort in the unfamiliar place. The only time that she had felt confident here was with him by her side. She wasn’t sure if that was her fault or her hosts’.

Since she had left her chambers, in what felt like hours ago, she was no closer to finding him. Winterfell was much more extensive than she had ever realized. She was positive that it had to be the largest castle in the North, and surely one of the largest in all of the Seven Kingdoms.

Just as she rounded yet another corner in an unfamiliar wing, she was face to face with a brown haired girl who walked quiet as a mouse with a sword strapped to her hip. If the Stark looks weren’t enough to give it away, the sword surely did. She resembled Jon more than any other of his siblings, Daenerys noted.

“You must be Arya. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. Your presence was missed at yesterday’s festivities."

“It’s kind that you say so, Your Grace. You’ll have to forgive my absence. Formalities are better left to my sister. She’s the true lady of the family,” said Arya. Daenerys would have to disagree with her, though, as this is the warmest greeting she had received so far concerning the Stark siblings.

“Well, I do hope that we have a chance to get better acquainted during my stay here. I know how relieved your brother was to find out that you were alive while he was at Dragonstone."

“It would be an honor,” said Arya before they started to part ways. “If you should have any need of my brother, I believe I last saw him under the Godswood,” she added, turning back to face Daenerys.

Although she couldn’t be sure, Daenerys thought that she saw a glint of a smirk creep onto the girl’s face. Surely it wasn’t possible for her to know; they had been so careful and had barely spent any time together at all since they had arrived.

“Thank you, Lady Arya. You’ve been exceedingly helpful.” Daenerys said, as she grinned and turned her head down slightly.

“Oh, I’m just Arya, Your Grace,” she said

Daenerys thought to herself, if only her title could be so simple. She found herself liking the youngest sister more than she imagined she would. “You’re not just Arya. You’re Arya.” For a moment, the two women’s gazes lingered on each other with a sense of understanding of who the other was, and Daenerys sensed that neither had any objections. Once the short trance was broken, Daenerys made her way down the hallway and out into the courtyard.

\---

The weirwood tree in the Godswood was the most majestic tree Daenerys had ever laid her eyes upon. Even though she had spent years surrounded by the finest castles and materials that gold could buy, the exquisiteness and glitz of all the major cities back east was grandiose and lacking subtlety. What she saw before her was a natural rarity in the world, as was the man sitting beneath it.

Jon was sat on a snow covered rock underneath the tree, overlooking the frozen pond. In his hands he held his Valyrian sword, which was propped up against his knee as he cleaned it with the freshly fallen snow. As she made her way over to him, Daenerys felt her feet drag through deeper and deeper patches of snow until the tail of her winter coat was tracing through the white softness behind her.

“Will you allow your queen to interrupt your deep brooding, Jon Snow?,” she said as she lingered before him.

“Aye, just as long as she doesn’t stop me from being sentimental, as well.” Jon scooted over to one side of the rock, signaling that he meant what he said.

“When I think of him, this is always where I picture him. Sat underneath this very tree, on this very rock, cleaning his sword. Foolish, really, now that I think about it. I have a childhood full of memories with my father, and the only thing I think about is him sitting. Praying, truly. Not that the gods ever heard him,” he spoke softly, returning to the silence that was in the air before her arrival.

Daenerys wasn’t quite sure how to respond in such a sensitive moment. She knew that this was a situation in which her comfort would have been welcomed, but she wasn’t sure how to offer it to him. All that she had ever heard about Ned Stark came from her brother, and his words certainly weren’t kind. As the years had passed, she had seen that his recollection of certain events became warped to fit the anger that had consumed him. Now that she was grown, she recognized that she wasn’t able to differentiate between what was true, and what was fabricated.

“All that I’ve heard about your father came from Viserys. I would quite like to hear about the man from you, as you knew him as he was. You saw him when no one else was around. I’ve found that is where you reach the truth of a person. How they behave when they think no one is watching.” As she spoke, Daenerys intertwined her cold fingers into his, and he stroked the back of her hand softly with his thumb. For the first time in weeks, she finally felt warm.

“I could try, but his presence in my life feels like a lifetime ago.” As he paused, Jon fiddled his fingers. “He was the best man, the best father… the best Lord. He cared, with an undying devotion, for his people. Their problems were his problems, none of them a burden to him, unlike with other Lords. He strived to make a difference for the people of the North. It’s the only thing that kept him involved in the southern politics of it all.” He paused for a moment, and Daenerys thought that he might have been done sharing.

“When I was younger, he seemed like an unmovable force. To me, he was the strongest person in the world. I never even thought about a day where he would no longer be here. The concept still seems so unbelievable. But he’s gone. I miss him always, but it’s days like today where I truly feel his absence. He would have known exactly what needs to be done, and he would have known the right way to do it all,” he said, still looking at the ground.

Daenerys gently reached her hand up to grab his chin. Slowly, she lifted his head up so that she could look into his eyes. “He’s here. I never had the pleasure of knowing him, but from what you’ve said just now, you’re more like him that you’ll ever know. What did you say to me when you first walked into the throne room?”

Jon stared intently for a moment, as if trying to recall exactly what had been said.

“You said, “the Lords of the North placed their trust in me to lead them, and I will continue to do so as well as I can.” The Lords made you King in the North because they trust you, Jon. They were functioning without a leader after the death of your brother. They didn’t need to crown you King; they wanted to. They trust you, just as they trusted your father all those years.” Daenerys stared fixedly, trying to make him see his own worth.

  
“Ah well I was foolish then. That was before I saw the enormity of the Night King’s army again. The dead are almost twice what we have of living soldiers, and it’ll only continue to grow in battle. How are we to survive in a war, when our enemy has the power to raise the dead?” Just then, as he finished speaking, Jon quickly sucked in a short breath.

After a moment of confused silence, he stood up and “The Starks.” He began to pace under the tree, and Daenerys started to wonder what she had missed.  
“What do you mean, “the Starks?” Presently, she was very perplexed.

“The Starks, in the crypts. At no point during the battle do I plan on letting the Night King into the castle’s walls, but I don’t know how far his ability to raise the dead extends. It wouldn’t do us any good to be fighting for our people outside, if more of his risen soldiers are just killing them on the inside.” As the realization of his words meant hit her, Daenerys wondered why this hadn’t occurred to any of them before.

“We have to burn the bodies in the crypts. It’s the only way to ensure everyone’s safety,” he said, with a voice full of grief.

“Jon, is this truly the only way? What will your siblings say? Everyone already thinks that I’ve made you forget your Northern roots, what will they think when you begin burning the bodies of all the Starks that ever were?” She pleaded. Daenerys already knew that what he was saying was necessary, but she worried for what it would mean for their future. She was sure that if Sansa could find some way to blame this on her, she would.

“He’s been gone for years, Dany. It’s like you said, he’s still here. And if I knew him, this,” he said as he looked up into the tree, “is where he would be. Not in some damp, concrete hole.” He reached out his hand for her to help her up from where she was still sitting. “Let’s go. I want him to meet you before going down to the crypts won’t mean very much anymore.”

**III. Sansa**

Sansa looked around the Great Hall and felt very far-removed from everyone else in attendance. She wondered if there would ever be a time in her life when she would feel true joy again. As she considered everyone’s current situation, she assumed probably not. Happiness is a hard thing to find in normal circumstances, so she deduced that there wouldn’t be much to go around at all while they waited for their enemy to arrive. She began to wonder when that would be. Had anyone ever fought a war against an enemy this unknowable? Surely not.

Dozens of different conversations were taking place around her, but she couldn’t bring herself to join into any of them. Sansa shuffled the roasted potatoes around on her plate as she sat across from Lady Brianne, who seemed just as content sitting in the silence as she did.

Everyone else’s focus seemed to be on the queen, who was sitting at the main table up front alone with Jon. The northerners didn’t seem to be any more warm towards her than they had yesterday, and Sansa noticed that many of them looked upon her table with confusion. Had they all come to realize what she already had months ago, even before they arrived together? The spectacle of the Jon and the queen sitting at the head table as equals had caused some confusion among the people. Even though they presented it as the queen respecting Jon as the North’s leader, Sansa was sure the people had to suspect there was more to it.

Davos walked into the hall, and down the aisle to whisper in something into Jon’s ear. Once he had heard whatever it was that had been told to him, he whipped his head around to stare at the main entrance. Seconds later, two of the queen’s Unsullied walked in, leading a man in ratty looking clothing. His hair was long and shaggy, as was his beard. The realization of the man’s identity didn’t hit her until he right beside her, still following behind the guards. The same could be said for Brianne, who had turned pale.

“Your Grace, this man calls himself a Jaime Lannister. He wished to meet with you both the minute he arrived.” said one of the Unsullied. His name was “Grey Worm,” if Sansa had remembered correctly.

Queen Daenerys stared at the man in front of her. If looks could kill, Jaime Lannister would have been dead moments ago. She looked to be attempting to compose herself, and for the first time since meeting her, Sansa felt compassion toward the young queen. She knew what it felt like for someone to have to look their father’s killer in the eyes, as she had every day for years after her own father’s death. Even though his hadn’t been the hand that swung the sword, her father’s blood was still on Joffrey’s hands.

“Ser Jaime, I hope you had a pleasant journey North. We thank you for joining the fight.” the queen was able to muster up.

“Yes, Your Grace. Even though winter is upon us, the weather is still much colder than I had expected it to be,” said the Kingslayer.

“Well, Queen Daenerys is right. We thank you for making the journey here, despite it all. I expect you’ll be needing a bed and place to wash up. Everyone’s just finished up eating, so we’ll have supper sent up to your room. If you talk with Ser Davos, he can help accommodate shelter and food for your soldiers. I imagine they’ll be needing food, as well, after the long journey.” said Jon, sincerely.

The Kingslayer shuffled his feet in place for a moment, as he looked down at the ground. “I came alone.”

“Is that so?” the queen said through her teeth. “Well, please tell us when we can expect your sister and her armies to grace us with their presence? It is unknown exactly how long we have, but the wall will not be enough to hold them off forever. Eventually we will need to fight, and it won’t do us much good if they’re still leagues away.” By her biting tone, Sansa could tell that the queen was trying her very best to keep her disillusionment with the situation in check.

“You misunderstand me, Your Grace. I’ve come alone, and it will remain that way. My sister’s armies are still south. They will not be marching North.” He paused a moment, and took a step closer to them, as if he was trying to keep the moment secretive from the prying eyes and ears. “She lied to you. She lied to me as well. She never had any intention of sending her armies here to fight alongside us. As we speak, she has gathered Euron Greyjoy’s Ironfleet, as well as bought a sellsword company from Bravos, the Golden Company. With them, she has added 25,000 soldiers to her existing army. She never had any intention of sending her armies here to fight alongside us, she only lied to buy herself some more time to strengthen her forces in the event that we all make it out alive.”

“We? Please enlighten us as to what that could possibly mean. You stand alone in this room,” the queen scoffed.

“Yes, we. I meant what I said back in King’s Landing. I promised to fight for the living! I intend to keep that promise, no matter where my sister’s misguided priorities lie.” At this point, the room had long ago fallen silent, and now every eye and ear in the room were focused on the scene playing out before them. Sansa noticed Lord Tyrion, who must have entered the room sometime during the exchange, staring sheepishly in the back corner of the room.

“You must forgive me, but I am failing to see how you can be of any help to anyone. You are just one man with one hand. I’m searching for reasons as to why I shouldn’t have my dragons burn you alive tonight.” The queen, herself, looked as if she was an extension of her dragons, as she stared at him with a wild fire in her eyes. “I feel that I have been more than cordial to you in the past, certainly more than you deserve.”

Sansa heard the sound of quick footsteps on stone in the deadly quiet room, and noticed Tyrion making his way hurriedly towards his brother.

“Your Grace, Ser Jaime came here knowing fully well how he would be received once he delivered this news, but he came anyway. Surely that should speak to his true intentions,” said a very panicked Tyrion.

“Your brother, you mean? Your opinion will be the very last that I consult in matters concerning your family, Lord Tyrion, I can assure you of that. Because of you and the trust that you placed in your sister, should we make it out alive, we will almost certainly lose against her with whatever forces we have left.” The queen was no longer able to keep her disgust towards the Lannisters at bay any longer, it seemed to Sansa.

“I will remind you, Your Grace, that you placed your trust in her as well. We all wanted to believe that my sister was capable of caring about something other than herself for once. It seems that we were all wrong in giving her the benefit of the doubt. However, Jaime is here now, proving that he’s left her. He is still worth giving the benefit of the doubt.”

The Queen closed her eyes for a moment. Once they were finally opened, she was staring at the two brothers with a look of amusement in her eyes. “My brother told many gory stories to me as a child, as they were always his favorite. His very favorite, however, was the one of our father’s death. As a child, you,” she said as she focused her eyes on Jaime, “were the scariest monster of them all to me. I couldn’t fathom how one person could be so cold and calculating, as to stab their king in the back. A member of the Kingsguard, no less. You killed him, and as his warm blood poured down the steps of the Iron Throne, you took his place for yourself.” She paused as if to reign herself back. “My brother’s favorite part of the story, however, was when he would detail, even as a child himself, how we would take our home back and kill all of those who wrong our family. Starting with you. So do not presume to tell me who I should be giving the benefit of the doubt, Lord Tyrion,” the queen said as she turned her focus to him, “I’m still not sure if you’re on that list yourself, as you reached your quota of mistakes made, while in my service, some time ago.”

Jaime Lannister stared at her for a prolonged moment, considering what words he would use to explain the worth of his existence. “The Mad King earned that affectionate title for himself appropriately. After Rhaegar fell on the Trident, he was fully consumed by his madness. He was going to burn all of King’s Landing with wildfire, civilians be damned! The choice I had to make wasn’t an easy one, but even knowing how all of it would turn out, even though I have carried the title of Kingslayer with me since that very day,” Ser Jaime looked pointedly, “I would make the same choice all over again.”

The queen was taken aback, and rightfully so. Sansa couldn’t imagine what it must feel like to hear such lies spewing out of the man who had killed her father. The Lannisters really didn’t have any honor left, she thought to herself. At least two-thirds of what’s left of them, that is.

“My father was an evil man. I don’t need his murderer to point that out to me. Everything that I have done, every decision that I have made in my journey to Westeros, has been done to try to right the wrongs committed against the realm by my father since I learned the truth about him from Ser Barristan Selmy. I am fully aware of the type of king he was, but I am not my father. In the new world that I am building, tell me why I should allow someone with your list of accomplishments, as you seem to be proud of them, to live in it.”

Before the two had begun their latest exchange, the room was already quiet. However, the silence that was now upon it seemed eerie and unnatural. The most that anyone dared to do was look at the person sitting next to them out of the corner of their eye. Sansa couldn’t imagine how intriguing this all seemed for some of the commoners, as they very rarely saw political discussions of this magnitude discussed in public. This type of situation was foreign, even to her, and she had seen a lot.

“I wanted to fight beside Rhaegar at the Trident, but I bet your brother never told you that part of the story, did he? It’s true though. I wanted to. Begged even, but your father wouldn’t allow it. I was of more use to him as a political hostage to keep my family in check, than I was as one soldier on the battlefield. I never got to shield your brother, as our future king in battle. If you’ll have me, should the chance present itself, I will shield you, to the best of my ability, as I wanted to for Rhaegar all those years ago.

“You will never be anywhere close to her on the battlefield, if she lets you live, I can promise you that.” Jon said calmly.

“Whatever the battle tactics are, I feel that I could be of some help. I do have experience leading an army,” he said as he looked around the room. “I don’t see too many people who could say the same,” he stated as he looked back at Jon. “As your queen pointed out, I only have one hand, so my chances of survival are already stunted in comparison, but a man is a man, and just recently you’ve lost fifteen thousand that you were counting on. Can you really spare another?”

Jon looked to the queen, seeming to allow her to make the decision regarding the man’s fate alone. As she stared at the man who had murdered her father, she had a choice to make. Would she kill him to finally settle her own personal desires, or would she spare him, to the vexation, but good of the realm? As Sansa posed these questions to herself, the queen had made her way up from her chair to stand inches away from the face of Jaime Lannister. “Very well. I will allow you to fight alongside us, but should I hear that you are conducting business on your sister’s behalf,” she paused as she leaned in closer, “I will have my dragons burn you alive faster than you can utter Kingslayer.” With that, she turned to leave the room, separating herself from the stunned audience.

It seemed that as a generation, they were making leaps and bounds compared to those that had come before them when it came to working together. At least for the time being, an understanding was reached, which was more than they could say for what any of their parents had been able to accomplish. Maybe, just maybe, she thought to herself, they had never tried to understand each other. Perhaps it was just the fact that they were all facing death by the same enemy, but as Sansa stared down at the table in front of her, she would have liked to have thought that it was something more than that.

Once the queen’s advisors and Jon had also left the Great Hall, the room erupted into fantastical whispers. Brienne looked at Sansa, from across the table, as though she had already been through the battle against the dead.

“She let him live, Marvin, would you believe that? It’s certainly kinder than what he deserves!” said one woman down the table from her.

“Did she say she knew Ser Barristan Selmy?!” said a man in wonder.

“What type of cockamamie bullshit does he think he’s selling?” said another. “He’s about 30 years too late in coming up with a defense for his crimes. All that was, was pitiful lies while he was begging for his life.”

“He was called the Mad King for a reason. Just because he didn’t get to blow up King’s Landing, doesn’t mean that he wouldn’t have, had he been presented the chance. He burned the Starks alive down there not long before it, don’t forget that. With all that talk of burning him alive, it seems she’s carried her father’s affinity for fire,” replied one more.

As she sought out what others were saying in the room, most seemed to be on the side of the Dragon Queen, as they couldn’t believe that she had shown him mercy. Was it possible for her to have won the affection of some of the northerners? Sansa couldn’t imagine so, but she determined that the exchange did speak volumes towards the queen’s decision-making skills as a monarch. It simply wouldn’t have been acceptable to have murdered the brother of her hand, especially when he was here in front of everyone begging to help. His decision-making skills seemed to be razor sharp, as well. It couldn’t have been a coincidence that he demanded to have been brought before her in the Great Room, during meal time, with an audience. His gamble seemed to have paid off, at least for the time being, Sansa thought to herself.

**IV. Davos**

Two days had passed since Jaime Lannister’s arrival, and the fractures between the different houses were finally starting to show. No one had seen much of either Lannister brother, except at mealtimes, and even then their appearances were scarce. Davos suspected that he, too, probably would have acted the same. While he didn’t know Ser Jaime well, he had become fairly acquainted with Lord Tyrion over the past few months. It struck him as odd that he hadn’t been itching to be by the queen’s side, especially now that she almost certainly suspected him of treason in some fashion.

Presently, in the second hour of the morning, with the sky still dark and the moon still up, Jon and Daenerys had chosen a select few to be included in an important discussion; a brief “state of the realm” tête-à-têtes, one could say. Only those who could be trusted with the strictest of confidence were informed of its’ inception in the crypts of Winterfell. Davos himself had received notice of the gathering, only moments ago while he was fast asleep in his chambers.

As the candle lights flickered off the damp stone walls, he looked around unnervingly at the many graves of the Stark family. Even though he had been invited into the intimate family space, he still couldn’t help but feel that he didn’t belong in the sacred dwelling. It was no secret that prior to Theon Greyjoy usurping their home, the family scarcely let anyone other than themselves roam the halls beneath the castle. Nonetheless, here they all were. Old ways be damned.

In the dark halls stood Jon, Queen Daenerys, Sansa, Arya, Bran, Samwell, Jorah, Missandei, and Grey Worm. After the spectacle involving the Lannister brothers had occurred in the Great Hall, behind closed doors, the queen insisted that Lord Tyrion could no longer be trusted in matters concerning his family. No one dared to question whether or not he was still Hand of the Queen, but it would have been safe to assume that after he publicly questioned her judgement, the odds were stacked against him.

“We’ve gathered you all together because you are the only ones that we trust,” the queen said as she looked at all of the faces of those in attendance. “We’ve gathered you all here, because it might be the only place left where this can be delivered without eyes and ears following our every move.”

Jon stepped closer toward the small group, whose faces were exhibiting signs of worry and unease. “Two days ago Samwell came to see me. Along with his greetings, he delivered to me this.” he said as he held up a scroll bearing a message. “I received this from Tormund Giantsbane. He was stationed at the wall to keep watch over Eastwatch-by-the-Sea after we returned from our mission to capture a wight from beyond the Wall. Although his message is brief and somewhat hard to make out due to the weather, we have reason to believe that the Night King and his army have breached the Wall.” As he said this, Jon ran his fingers through his hair, a sure sign of the stress he was feeling.

Davos took the small slip of paper and read the words, “King Crow-- Night King through. Wrote from outpost.” After reading the faint handwriting, it became entirely clear to him that although the message was from Tormund, it was physically written by someone else.

“It wasn’t signed, but from the greeting, it’s not hard to guess who the sender was. We had no other information at the time, so I instructed a small riding party to journey to the outpost that we have stationed at Long Lake to try and find them. If the weather is fair, they should be arriving back any moment, which is why we’ve decided to share this information with you now.” As Jon spoke, Davos noticed that he looked like hell. This observation didn’t sit well with him. How long had he been grappling with this information, essentially alone? Davos felt guilty that he hadn’t noticed the signs of his distress earlier.

“You’ve had this information for how long? Three days? You didn’t feel that you should have shared this with us sooner?” Sansa Stark was quickly becoming heated, and her red hair was an accurate color to depict her fiery demeanor concerning almost all of life’s surprises.

“Two days,” the queen said as she stared directly at Sansa. “If we had shared the information with you any sooner, we would have run the risk of it getting out to the people. This has nothing to do with our confidence in any of you. When I accepted Lord Varys into my service, I never imagined that I might still be shielding secrets from his little birds. Nevertheless,” she said with an exhausted voice, “I cannot be sure of where his loyalties truly lie. Although he has never given me cause to doubt him, he arrived to Meereen with my Hand, and I don’t want to know what his decision would be if he were forced to choose a side.” She straightened the neckline of her dress as she paused for a moment, seemingly trying to decide how best to explain her viewpoint.

“I would bet my life on the fact that Cersei is feeding lies about me to the rest of the country. Thanks to Lord Tyrion’s blunders, I have lost all of my southern allies, so our ties to the rest of the country are severely severed. Presently, we can’t be sure that she doesn’t have her armies camped somewhere close to us outside of the North waiting for the right moment to strike. Although we would all like to believe that Ser Jaime is here to fight alongside us, it wouldn’t be the first time that a Lannister was sent to infiltrate a castle. If we’d told you, there is a chance it could have made its’ way to the smallfolk, causing them nothing but worry these past few days. It would have accomplished nothing other than providing them with a constant gut-wrenching fear. A fear that nothing could subdue, as everything is out of our control. They’re already scared enough. Believe me, laying that burden on them is not something that I would wish on my worst enemy. This was our only choice. You don’t have to agree with it, but I am the queen. Ultimately the decision was mine to make, and I would do it all the same if presented with the choice.”

Everyone in the room remained still, as the tension in the air was thick. Davos noticed Arya looked at the queen, and then over to Jon.

“When you came here you thought that we would have more time before the wall fell,” Sansa said as her voice cracked slightly. “What does this mean for us now?” Now, her voice was low and scared; far from the boisterous tone she was exuding moments ago. In that instance, Davos realized that he was surrounded by children. King, Queen, and Lady they may be, but young people nonetheless, with not a parent alive between all of them. How scared they must all be, he thought to himself, even if they’re doing a good job hiding it.

“Lady Sansa, if I may…” Davos said as he trailed off, waiting for her approval to continue. Once she gave him a slight nod, he began again.

“No one has any answers. This is unchartered territory that we find ourselves in. The way I’m choosing to look at it, is as if it is a storm. You may know snow is coming, but not until it truly arrives do you know how long the snow will fall. The Night King brings the storm with him, but he also brings an army of the dead. There is simply no way to know what this means in the worldly sense, but for us here today, it can only mean one of two things: life or death. You brother, bless him, has had more encounters with the dead army than anyone would care to have in a lifetime, and the war still isn’t over. Unfortunate as that may be, however, he has been able to study the Night King and his soldiers to see what we’re up truly against. This fact cannot make the Night King happy, as no Lord Commander, no matter how dead, wants the enemy to see what he’s bringing to the battlefield before it starts. I count that as a win for us.” Once he had finished speaking, Davos gave Sansa a small smile to try to help comfort her nerves. Yet, his smile did little to settle his own.

Ser Jorah took one step inward towards the group. “I agree with Ser Davos. While we may not be fighting a familiar enemy, the same rules of war still apply. Albeit, slightly different. The war is not yet lost, My Lady.”

“Forgive me, but it’s hard to have faith when we are fighting against an enemy that can raise the dead. Say that we do manage to get the upper hand, how will we ever be able to win when the enemy has the power to raise the newly dead?” said Sansa, still searching to make sense of a senseless predicament.

Davos noticed Jon exchange a look with the queen. After a few moments, he began to turn his attention to his siblings with a look of agony in his eyes.

“There is something else that I need to tell you,” said Jon, softly. “it’s another reason we chose to meet down here. The Night King has the power to raise the dead. As I told Queen Daenerys, no one intends to let him breach the walls of the castle, but in battle there are no guarantees. Ramsay Bolton thought that he would be safe behind these walls, but his death is confirmation that nothing goes according to plan.” He took a deep swallow as tears brimmed in his eyes. “No one will be safe if… if…,” but he couldn’t finish.

The queen placed her hand on his arm and looked into his eyes for a moment.

“What Jon is trying to say, is that we cannot guarantee that all of the women and children will remain safe if the Starks remain in the crypts.” Daenerys paused for a moment, and it seemed to Davos that she was trying to prepare the room for the weight of her next words. “We believe that the only way to ensure everyone’s safety, is to burn the bones that lay here. The bones of your family.”

The two Stark sisters exchanged a horrified look. Bran remained seated in his wheelchair, his face never moving a muscle.

“There must be another way. Surely.” Arya pleaded softly.

“There is no other way,” stated Bran. “They are right. If we allow them to continue resting here, we may soon see them again.” The weight of his words resonated with all in attendance. Davos knew that although Bran said very little, it was enough confirmation for everyone involved to know that the decision was the right one.

“We wanted to give you a chance to say your goodbyes. I know Father and Rickon are already gone, but they’ll hear you. This is a chance for us all to say farewell properly. It’s one of the only things left that we have a say in, and I won’t have them roaming the halls once more. Here they are at peace, and they will remain that way,” Jon tried to reason with his three siblings.

Just then, several loud sets of footsteps could be heard making their way to the group. Down the hall, a faint light floating in the distance was slowly getting closer. As three figures could be seen in the shadows, Grey Worm reached for the hilt of the weapon on his waist.  
“Well if it isn’t good-old-fuckin’ King Crow!” As he spoke, Tormund Giantsbane enveloped a far shorter Jon into his arms. Jon stumbled back at the impact of his embrace, and muffled noises could be heard coming from the man.

Beric Dondarrion gazed at the scene with a look of slight amusement, while Sandor Clegane’s scarred face remained stony. The only time his face moved was to glance at the youngest Stark sister, whose eyes met his with a look resentment. Odd, Davos thought.

Once Tormund had finally released him, Jon said, “I suppose it’s just crow now. You won’t find a king here anymore, Tormund. I bent the knee.”

“I’ll call you whatever you want me to call you, so long as you agree not to get rid of this glorious hair too,” said Tormund as he threw a hand into Jon’s dark curls, thrashing them in every direction. “Pretty boy.” The two old friends exchanged huge grins, and for a moment everyone had left the dark conversation that had just taken place. How nice it would be if they could stay like this, thought Davos.

“But enough of the fuckin’ greetings. We have business to discuss; The Night King has broken through the wall. The last we saw him, he was leading his army past the abandoned Queenscrown. We had to ride around him, so we lost track.”

“How long do you think we have until he reaches Winterfell?” said Samwell Tarly sheepishly.

“It’s hard to say as we had to ride around him just to get the message sent out to you in time, but I would say they’re no more than a five day’s ride away. If that. No matter how deadly they are, they’ve got to be the slowest army I’ve ever seen. So we have that at least,” said Beric.

“Well, five days is a longer warning than we could have hoped for. At least that leaves us time to warn the others. The forgers have been working overtime to finish with the weapons, so we should have a nice supply built up. Soon Gendry should be returning from his ride south to gather all of the Valyrian steel he can find, I just hope he doesn’t come back empty handed.” At least for the time being, as Jon spoke, he seemed more at ease than he had for the past few days. It could be assumed that he thought they would have less time. Davos wasn’t sure if the extra days were a gift or a curse. True, it left them more time to prepare for battle. It also left them more time to dread the outcome. The days would serve as a countdown to consider their own mortality, this he was sure.

“There’s more,” Tormund added faintly. He looked down in the direction of the queen, a sympathetic look taking over his face. “The Night King has your dragon, Your Grace. It’s the weapon he used to break down the wall. He’s one of them now.”

Everyone turned their attention to the queen as she was receiving the news. For the first time since he’d met her, Davos saw a glimpse of the young woman she truly was. In this moment, she could not keep up the strong exterior she so often presented to the world. Her lips parted slightly as her face fought to hold back tears. Jon grabbed ahold of her hand, which caused a few in the room to exchange quick glances with one another.  
Queen Daenerys quickly took a step back and removed her hand from his. “If you’ll excuse me…” She swiftly turned to exit through the dark tunnels alone.

Seconds after her departure, Missandei and Grey Worm were quick to follow behind her with a torch to light her way. This left everyone still staring at Jon, who looked as helpless as a child.

“Go be with her,” said Sansa gently as she nudged Jon’s shoulder, much to the surprise of everyone in the room.

With that, Jon walked quickly away from those remaining in the group.

Silence suffocated everyone for a moment, but it was quickly broken.

“So, they’re fucking eh?” Tormund said as he let out a deep chuckle.

**V. Jon**

Although Jon hadn’t been far behind her, the walk to Daenerys seemed like it stretched on for ages. Once he had reached her chambers, he lifted his arm to knock on her door, but hesitated. He was flooded with a feeling of melancholy as he remembered the last time he had knocked on her door, unsure of how he would be received.

Three knocks later, the door was opened by Missandei, whose face was holding the same feeling of helplessness that Jon was feeling. Coming from behind her, he heard muffled sobs. What was stopping him from entering, Jon couldn’t say. The only thing he knew was that in that moment, his legs were betraying him.

“She hasn’t stopped crying since we were down in the crypts. Grey Worm went back to find your maester friend to see about getting her some milk of the poppy,” Missandei said as she stepped aside. “She’ll be glad to see you, I think.”

As he looked into the room, he saw Dany in a ball on the floor sobbing the hardest he had ever heard another person cry. Before he was aware of his surrounding, he found himself crouched down beside of her with his arms wrapping around her shaking body.

“I- I can’t- breathe,” she said as she tried to talk through her sobs. She struggled as she began to pull her dress away from her body. The desperation of her grasps proved useless, so she started to pull especially hard on the neckline of it. As he watched her, his heart ached realizing that this was something she needed to do. Seconds passed before the sounds of material ripping finally filled the air.

As she shredded the thin dress to pieces, Jon could only look on while a puddle of material was gathering on the floor. After she had successfully peeled the dress from her body, she reached up to undo her braids. Missandei quickly walked over to take over, slowly untangling the thick rows of hair.

Unsure of what to do next, he walked to the bed to grab a thick fur blanket to wrap around her naked body, which was still laying on its’ side atop the cold wooden floor.

“Dany…” he said as he brushed his thumb softly along her hairline. “Tell me what you need, darling.” Still, he was met with only sobs of pain. It killed him to think that she was suffering through this alone. He made the decision to lift her tiny body up into his lap, resting her on his legs. She reached up to grab the fur of his coat, wrapping her fingers tightly around into a ball near his chest. Although her crying had softened a little, she still wept deeply into his chest while the two of them stayed on the floor.

How long the three of them sat in the room, he couldn’t be sure. Long after she had cried herself out, the only sound that filled the room was the crackling of the logs on the fire in front of them.

Just as he had thought she was beginning to drift off to sleep, a knock came from the door. Grey Worm entered holding a cup a hot tea, with a small potion bottle holding a white liquid.

“Your friend had the kitchen make her this,” he said as he handed Jon the cup. “He said to put three drops of this into her tea. He said it will help her sleep.”

Missandei grabbed the tea and the milk of the poppy, and she walked away to begin mixing them.

Jon lifted the two of them up, and he walked towards the bed still cradling her.

“I don’t want it,” Dany said with a hoarse voice. “I want to feel it all. I want to mourn my child now. I don’t want to prolong it. I’d only be saving the pain for another day.”

Grey Worm and Missandei exchanged a quick glance, but did as they were told.

“Before- the first time I grieved for him, I did it with a sense of resolve. I knew that his death was a casualty for the greater good. If he had to die for us to retrieve the dead soldier, I was at peace with it because I thought it would help us convince Cersei. But now,” she said as tears filled her eyes once more, “I see that he died for nothing. He’s one of them now; controlled by evil and it’s all my fault.” She leaned back onto the soft pillows as she began to weep again.

Jon took off his shoes so that he could crawl up to her closer on the bed. He met her chin with his hand as he gently lifted her head up so he could look into her eyes. He couldn’t be sure what emotion he was emoting, but he hoped that she was met with nothing but love from him. “It’s not,” he said, matter-of-factly. As she closed her eyelids, tears fell down onto her cheeks, but he quickly brushed them away.

Jon pulled her into him closer so that he could softly kiss her forehead. For a moment, it felt as though they were the only two in the world. The only thing that brought him back to reality was the sound of Grey Worm and Missandei making their way towards the door.

“It looks as if there’s nothing more for us to do,” Missandei said as Grey Worm reached for the door. “I left the tea on the desk should she change her mind. If you need anything, I’m just down the hall. Please don’t hesitate to come get me, no matter what time.”

“Thank you," Jon said in a whisper. "Thank you both."

Once it was just the two of them in the room, he was terrified of his own ability to comfort her in a time like this, but knew that he had to make it clear to her that she wasn't alone.

“Dany, none of this is your fault. There is no way that you could have foreseen that this would be the outcome. Nobody knew that he held a weapon with enough power to bring down one of your children. If I had, I never would have sent word for you to come to us. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine.” He shifted slightly, reaching for her hand. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

Quickly, she sat up so that she was looking intently into his eyes. “You have nothing to apologize for, Jon. If you say this isn’t my fault, then it certainly isn’t yours.” She stared for a prolonged moment before she pulled the covers back over herself.

“I’m scared. I’m scared for the Great War, of course, but I’m more scared of what comes after. Since I arrived here in Westeros, everything has fallen apart. Every decision I have made has backfired in some way. I thought that I was born to rule, but I’m beginning to think that I was only born to conquer. The people here certainly don’t want me. My home, the home I longed for all those years, has rejected me before I even got a chance to say hello to it. What comes after?" she wondered aloud. "I feel so alone. There’s nothing for me here.”

Jon couldn’t believe what he was hearing. The woman that he loved was broken, and was presently a shell of the person that she was when he met her all those months ago. Westeros had a habit of breaking even the strongest of people. His father was proof of that.

Daenerys was the strongest person that he had ever met. Although he wished that he could have shielded her from the pain and heartbreak of the past, it was not an option. However, there was something that he could do to protect her from pain in the future.

As he held her in his arms, he knew that the decision he was about to make was not one that could be taken back.

“Should we live through the Long Night, you will rule Westeros. I’ll make sure of it. You will break the wheel, just as you told me you would the day that we met,” he let out a deep breath that he hadn’t even known he’d been holding. “and if you’ll have me, I’ll be there with you for all of it.” His pulse quickened slightly. "With me you'll never be alone."

He felt her body still in his arms. After a few moments, she turned on her side to place a soft kiss on his lips. As he deepened the kiss, he felt her warm tongue slide into his mouth, desperately trying to get closer to him than she already was. Her tongue achieving things that their bodies had failed. Tears still fell down her face, and he tasted the saltiness of them on their lips and felt the wetness of them on his own cheeks. Jon couldn’t say if they were from joy of despair. She broke the kiss to wipe underneath his eyes, and he realized that the tears had been his own. Joy, he decided.

No words, from either of them, were needed to describe the understanding that had been reached. Jon would not allow his family, or anyone for that matter, stop him and the north from helping her take the throne. 

Just then, scratching sounded at the door, and the two of them froze to look at each other in confusion. After it refused to go away, Jon rose from the bed to see what it was.

As he opened the door, he saw a flash of white rush by him. Closing the door, he turned to see Ghost sitting atop the bed, resting on Dany’s legs. After her shock had dissipated, she lifted her hand to softly scratch him behind the ears, causing him to lay his head down into her other hand.

The three of them laid in the bed together in a blanket of understanding. Unsure of what the future would bring, Jon could be sure of one thing. Tonight, he felt only love. Perhaps for the first time in his life, he began to dream of a future he thought could only belong to someone else, and the thoughts danced their way into his dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, there it is folks. I hope to update again within the week, so it shouldn't be too long before the next chapter. I'm having so much fun writing for these incredible characters, and I hope you're all enjoying reading about them. (:


	3. Last Line of Defense

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello! It took me longer than I would have liked to write this chapter, as I’m finishing up my summer courses. I wanted to try to get this chapter out as soon as possible as it’s been two weeks since I posted the last one, therefore, I didn’t get to proofread it the way I would have liked, so I apologize for any spelling or punctuation errors.

**I. Jon**

The morning light spilled its’ way into the chambers where they were sleeping, resting its’ warm rays onto the side of her soft sleeping face. Their legs were still tangled together, leaving no space between them. Jon had awoken some time ago, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave the bed. As he laid there admiring her, a version of her very few had ever been able to see, he wondered why now?

For years and years as a child, he spent a lot of time thinking about love. There were many different versions of it, he knew. The gaping hole that was missing a mother’s love was soothed by him joining the Night’s Watch. There, nobody had any family with them, so he never felt out of place like he had in Winterfell. There, he had accepted his choice; he would hold no titles, have no wife, and bare no children. As a young boy, it seemed like an easy enough decision. Until he met Ygritte, he never imagined that he would ever feel the touch of a woman, much less the love of. Still, even her love for him wasn’t enough to make him forget his duty. Was it even love? Presently, he couldn’t be sure. It was nothing compared to what he felt now,  this he was sure of.

Even still, he couldn’t help but feel angry at the timing of its’ inception. Why now, when the world was ending and they’d barely had any time? He stopped himself from thinking much deeper into the subject as it was sure to cause him anger. His anger hadn’t been directed at the world so much as it was at himself. His Uncle Benjen had tried to tell him that this is exactly what he would have been giving up, but he was too rash and naïve to hear him at the time. He had to stop himself from worrying about lost time. Besides, resentment wasn’t something that he wanted to feel now, not with her.

He slowly reached him hand up to move a strand of hair out of her face, as not to wake her, but the effort had been hopeless. She slowly opened up her eyes, and the sun captured the blissful calm of the morning in them.

“If you were anyone else, I’d be calling in my guards,” she said closing her eyes again. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you it isn’t polite to stare at a woman while she’s sleeping?” Dany said as she gave him a playful smirk.

“Truthfully, no,” said Jon. “No one ever had the chance. Your kind was practically extinct to us at the Watch, so I don’t believe it ever crossed anyone’s minds to tell you the truth,” he returned with a mischievous tone.

The two of them sat in a comfortable silence for a moment, but when Daenerys lifted her head back up to look at him, her face displayed a different emotion.

“Last night… I understand that you said what you did in the heat of the moment. It’s-,” but she was cut off.

“I meant what I said. I will help you secure the throne, Dany. No one- not the northerners, nor my family, will be able to convince me not to help you. I know that is what you’re afraid of-, them convincing me not to help you, but I promise you… you will not take King’s Landing alone. You will have at least one other army other than your own. If we live through this war, the North will be there to help you take the Seven Kingdoms.” he replied quickly, already knowing where she was going with her worries.

“I believe that is what you think they will do, but things rarely turn out how we plan. I’ll have your help, but yours alone.” Daenerys’ voice remained soft, “Let everyone else decide for themselves after the war. Only then will I accept your word for it.”

Mediating between the Northerners and his chosen queen had not been easy work. Jon knew that they were tough people to crack, but once you earned their respect, you would have their loyalty for life. Only a select few had seen her sacrifice for everyone beyond the wall, but it mattered very little in the minds of those who hadn’t seen it.

“There will come a time when they will see all you have sacrificed to make it here. I can’t promise you when, but I know that they will come to perceive you for who you truly are.” He inched down closer to her, stopping only when he felt her breath on his lips. “Until then, it looks like I have you all to myself; our secret.” He kissed her with the same desperation that he had every kiss before; like it could be their last.

“Yes our secret,” she said kissing him again. “and it must remain that way. Just because we’re able to find some pleasure in this predicament, doesn’t mean that everyone else will. Death may still be coming for us all. We don’t need to be letting everyone know how content we are while parents are worried about whether or not their children will live to see another day,” she continued with determination.

“I agree,” Jon said simply, careful not to let his satisfaction with the situation creep out. “but if you think those around us don’t already suspect something, you’re terribly mistaken.”

Daenerys’ face shifted back into a serious demeanor, her eyebrows begging the question when her mouth was unable to.

“My sisters, at least, but probably others. What, you don’t think that those we have chosen to surround ourselves with aren’t smart enough to start figuring it out? From what you’ve told me about Varys, I’m surprised everyone in the realm didn’t know that this was happening before we did.” Jon said with slight amusement. “However, no matter who knows, staying locked up in this room the whole morning won’t be the way to keep it hidden”

He cupped her cheek with his hand and leaned in to give her a parting kiss. “Besides, I told Davos that I would go with him to meet with the forgers today to discuss weapons.”

“Will we have enough?” She asked, the concern for everyone’s safety back at the forefront of her thoughts.

They certainly had enough dragonglass. What they were short on was time. Jon had discussed production specificities with Gendry while sailing to the Wall, but that had been close to two months ago. If he was being honest with himself, it was one of the things that he tried not to worry about when there were still so many other things that needed his attention. He trusted Davos when he said that Gendry was a skilled blacksmith, so he was hoping that his praise would reign true, as he still hadn’t been to check on the progress being made at the Winterfell forgers.

“We should as we’re not short on materials, but it’s not something I want to overlook. Do you have any plans for the day?” Jon said, allowing himself to wonder aloud.

“Yes, in fact, I do. My dragons haven’t had a large meal since we arrived. I thought I would take them flying while they look for food. I think they would quite enjoy having a look around the North from up above, as would I.”

Jon didn’t like the idea of her being up in the air alone and vulnerable. Not when they didn’t know, for certain, the location of the Night King and his army.

“Promise me you won’t ride too far north. If he could shoot one dragon out of the sky, he certainly wouldn’t have a problem doing it again. I surmise it would bring him great joy to bring you down as well, should he get the chance.” As he spoke, Jon noticed pain appear on Daenerys’ face. Her agony was still fresh from the news she had received the night before, and if he had to guess, it would continue to be for quite some time.

“I would like to remind you that I have a few years of experience with them. I birthed them from the ashes and have ridden them to countless battles. I’m perfectly capable, thank you.” Although she was attempting to make her tone playful, he knew that he had struck a chord. The last thing he wanted to do was make her feel unfit, especially since she was the world’s only dragonrider. However, in their limited time together, he had noticed that she was willing to sacrifice herself for the greater good while in flight. Hell, she herself had even said as much while on the beach at Dragonstone.

“I’m serious, Dany. I know that you can handle yourself up there, you’ve proved that well-enough, but should you spot the army of the dead, fly back. Don’t try to take them out by yourself. Promise me you won’t,” Jon said, feeling like a child as he begged.

“I promise.” Daenerys paused, looking at him with an amused expression for a moment. “I see it’s not so fun for you to be on the other side of a hero mission, is it?”

Damn her, he thought. These things did have a way of coming back around to bite him in the ass. Was this what she felt when she received word that they were trapped beyond the wall? Surely it couldn’t have been anything close to what he was currently feeling, as they’d barely known each other back then.

“No.” he said. “Not at all.”

Jon stared at her, and began to feel a hole developing in his chest. Someday, more than likely soon, his eyes would fall upon her one last time. Whenever it was, he decided, he wanted it to be in a moment like this. If they were to die, let it not be in front of each other. Even though they hadn’t known each other long, he couldn’t imagine a worse scenario. However, from what he’d seen, it was the things you want most not to happen, that so often do.

**II. Davos**

It was almost the afternoon, but already Davos felt as though he would quite like to return to bed. Sleep hadn’t been coming easily to him the past few nights, so the majority of his time was spent tossing and turning until he would eventually become so exhausted that he finally slept. He didn’t know much about health, but he knew that only running on two hours of sleep couldn’t have been good for him. Although he wasn’t a religious man, he was praying to all the gods to grant him sleep in these next nights before the war. While it’s true that after you die, one could argue that you have an eternity of sleep, he didn’t want to die exhausted. It was only the little things like sleep that he had any control over these days, and even that he was failing at.

Davos knew that Jon Snow, and maybe even the queen, respected him and kept him around for his expertise in certain fields. He understood that he was a decent advisor, but recently he couldn’t help but feel as if he was failing them. Even though they certainly weren’t holding him accountable for the way that recent events unfolded, Davos felt guilty because he knew that there had to have been some way to have predicted the outcome. After advising Stannis, he had learned a lot about the ways of Westeros and the political world built within it. However, politics didn’t matter much in their current battle. So if his expertise was no longer useful, did he even matter to them?

He decided that he couldn’t focus on such trivial things with so little time in the day to prepare for what was ahead. The smell of lemony chicken filled the air, but as Davos focused on his plate, he realized that he had lost his appetite some time ago. This was a good thing as he promised to meet Jon at the forgers around noontime, and he suspected he was already running late.

After he finished gathering his things, he started to walk, dreading the short journey to his next destination. Davos could handle a lot of things and his tolerance for cold weather was higher than most, having spent the last few years of his life in the North, but the weather recently had been bone-chilling. If they didn’t already know that the army of the dead was nearby, this alone would have given their location away. Eerie, he thought to himself.

\---

As he opened the old wooden door of the forgers, his hand grasped the freezing cold door knob, the temperature of which could be felt through his leather glove. Low temperatures like these had never been previously recorded in any of the maester’s books, and Davos wondered how they hadn’t yet lost a person to the cold. Soon enough, he supposed, but punished himself for such negative thoughts. There were enough people already resigning themselves to a dreary fate that he couldn’t be one of them.

He spotted Jon sitting on a large stone by the firepit, his cheeks rosy from the wind. As his eyes drifted towards Davos, he stood up and began to walk to him.

“I suppose it would be too much to wish for warmer weather, but it would be nice if the Night King brought with him summer instead,” said Davos, as the two men began to walk to the back of the shack.

“Yes, it would also be welcomed if he brought with him longer days, as well.” replied Jon, “Yesterday we only had five hours of daylight before the sun was retreating again. By the time he gets here, we’ll be lucky if we have any light in the day at all. But by now, I think we’re sure of the conditions we face. I think we should have a meeting to discuss the battle plans this evening before everyone turns in. We can’t put it off much longer.”

This was true. It was one of the reasons that everyone was holding off from meeting to discuss tactics. Although no one would say it, he knew that everyone would rather hold off until they were surer of the conditions, than make a plan that would inevitably fail based on dated information. It wasn’t the only reason they were waiting, though. Decidedly, there was a good chance they would all die. Sometimes it’s easier to postpone the inevitable, to avoid dealing with it.

Davos quickly nodded in agreement.

The two continued walking through the building until they arrived to where Gendry stood, but he was not alone.

The Red Woman, Melisandre, turned her head to face Jon and Davos as they approached, but she was not nearly as surprised by their presence as they were by hers’.

Upon seeing her face again, Davos was transported back to another time, not too long ago, where she was the worst monster that he knew. How simple that time seemed to him, now. Today, however, she was not any less of a threat than she was back then.

“Step away from him,” Davos bellowed out in anger. Gendry looked at him with trepidation, but his face held no fear towards the woman who had already taken so much from him. “I told you, that should you ever return, I would execute you myself. It’s very brazen of you to disobey orders so soon after they were given to you when it concerns your life.”

Melisandre began to pace slowly around the trio of men, but never uttered a word. This made Davos uneasy as he had already witnessed what she was capable of.

“Your mistake, Ser Davos, is that you presume I am scared of dying, when in fact, it is the opposite. I have opened my arms to death many times, but the Lord of Light is not finished with me, I’m afraid. I know this truth is painful for you to accept.” she said slyly.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s painful for me or not. The  truth  is that you burned a little girl at the stake, and we were  gracious  enough to let you leave with your life the first time, but you will not be so lucky a second.” In that moment, Davos wasn’t sure how he was presenting himself. This was surely the most infuriated he had ever been in a single instance, but he would not let her get the better of him.

The two of them had been at odds with one another since they had both served Stannis Baratheon. She corrupted him and soiled his reputation with those in the country due to her incessant preaching.  The bloody Lord of Light. How many people had lost their lives because of her preaching and her prophecies? While there was no way for him to know for sure, but he was positive that there would never be another.

“Death by fire seems fitting, I should think. I don’t believe that the queen will object to a free meal for her dragons, extra meat is scarce around here as of late.” He said, still seething; no longer making an effort to keep his rage in check.

Melisandre allowed a little smirk to creep onto her face while she slowly started inching closer to Davos. “And what do you think the queen will say to your plan? She knows that she has no enemy in me. It was my suggestion to her that brought ice and fire together, creating the bond between rulers that resulted in all of this,” she said as she raised her hands up into the air, gesturing to Winterfell and the people currently situated in it. “I am here to do good, not harm. I may not have always been right in my visions, but they come not from malicious intentions. I will help until the Lord of Light sees my purpose fulfilled.” She said calmly, and walked out the door of the shop.

The three men stood, stunned. Not only had she had the audacity to debate with them the terms of her violation, she then walked out of her own sentencing.

“I know it’s important to you; I’ll have some of my men send for the maester to have a trial set up. Tensions are running high, you can’t very well murder her in the courtyard, no matter how heinous her wrongdoings. She has to stand for her crimes, but she will be found guilty, the evidence is far too overwhelming.” Jon stated, remaining supportive in the most inopportune of times. There were far greater worries that he should be attending to, and Davos began to feel embarrassed for his pettiness.

It was true that he wanted her dead, there was no point in even trying to deny that he felt any sympathy towards her in her current predicament. As they say, she made her bed, but would she have to lie in it? It was almost time for the war, the dead were looming; an ever-present manifestation of all their fates. Although she had committed wretched acts, Davos didn’t believe that she was truly evil, just misguided.

“There’ll be no need.” Davos paused, clearly still wavering in his decision. “The war is here. Either we all die, Melisandre included, or we live, and we can decide her fate afterwards. I haven’t forgotten what she’s done, she will still answer for her crimes should we survive, but she could prove to be of some help during the battle. I’ve seen what power lies within her, but I don’t need to tell you that, you’re living proof of it.” As he finished speaking, he noticed Jon wince a bit when he referenced his resurrection. It bothered Jon that some religion, one with which he was completely unfamiliar with, held the ability to dictate his death and life. Although he wouldn’t say it, wouldn’t complain, Davos knew that he felt saddled with the burden of trying to make something of the second chance that he had been given. Though no one was sure what his overall purpose was, it was surely tied to 

Gendry still stood back from Davos and Jon, likely confused by what had just taken place. It was always an odd occurrence when people from different factions of your life knew each other.

“I regret to inform you, that I agree,” said Gendry, confidently. “She is certainly no friend of mine, Your Grace, but if what everyone says about her is true, she is not someone we can afford to lose.”

Jon contemplated for a moment, a little smile establishing itself on his face. It must be nice for him to have someone his own age around that reminds him of his father, thought Davos.

“Then we are all in agreement. For the time being, the Red Woman lives, so long as she seems to be helping us. And Gendry, you don’t have to ‘Your Grace’ me anymore, it’s just Jon,” he stated, calm and humble. “If you both will excuse me, I told Tormund I would go with him to update the Free Folk. It hasn’t been easy for them all, being misplaced from their homes for so long. They need familiar faces to reassure them, I believe.” He said, as he bid them farewell for the rest of the day. He would be there for some time, if Davos knew anything about the Wildings. They held more in common with the Northerners than either side would like to admit.

After he said his goodbyes to Gendry, he made his way back to his chambers to rest a while before dinner. It was already getting dark outside, so there was not much more that could be accomplished outside for the day.

Striding his way through crowds of people, he thought about his earlier decision. Life presented you with multiple opportunities to fret over whether or not one had made the right decisions, his certainly had anyway. If he just pictured her face, he began to second-guess whether or not he had made a mistake. He had to look at the bigger picture, though, had to be unbiased and diplomatic for the sake of all involved.

It had never been in him to be a selfish person. His family didn’t have excesses to be selfish over as a boy, so he had carried that mentality with him throughout life, even as he raised up in societal rank. If he had never chosen to promote his own self-interests before, now was surely not the time to start. If he killed her, justice would be done for Shireen and all of those that Melisandre had wronged before, but what about everyone else?

If there was even the slightest chance that she could increase the living’s odds against their dead enemies, it was obvious what he would choose; no matter how sick it made him feel to have her roaming around, unsure of what she would do next.

Once he had reached his bed, Davos laid down his head to try to forget about the world and all of its’ problems, at least for a little while. The last thought he would have before drifting off to sleep was one that he was ashamed to be the owner of, but it rang no-less true.

He was glad that his son had died in the Battle of the Blackwater. It was a kinder death than he would have received here. A death free from the possibility of an afterlife as a wight.

**III. Daenerys**

The castle was a welcomed source of warmth after spending hours out in the cold. The snow and winds outside had been far less kind as they jostled her in the air. Daenerys’ silver hair was dripping with melted snow, but she was no less determined to follow-through on her decision.

While she was flying, she was able to evaluate her life from a distance. Up there, no one was around to interrupt her thoughts, or sway her judgement. It was an odd sense of power that she felt while in the air; a dangerous one, she knew, should it lay in the hands of the wrong person. She thanked her mother’s gods every day that Viserys’ had not been the last dragon. As soon as the dragons had been big enough, she knew that he would have flown them to the Red Keep, caring little for who died while he was grasping for his crown. She was at least smarter than that.

If she was to accomplish what her brother would have unquestionably failed at, she had to do it according to her own instincts. Trusting them had been the only reason she had come this far. As of late, it was getting harder and harder to hear them over the voices of so many. Voices questioning her judgement, voices questioning her intentions. At times, it seemed as if it would prove to be too much for her handle. However, she could not look back, she had to look forward. If she was to provide a better future for Westeros and its’ people, her own personal misgivings must be squashed, starting with Lady Sansa.

She cared little for whether the Lady of Winterfell wished to speak with her when it had been unplanned. Their ridiculous conflict with one another must be dealt with before the army of the dead arrived. There would be no way for them to prevail against their enemies if they were still fighting amongst themselves at the same time.

As she walked down the winding halls leading to Sansa’s chambers, she wondered how long it would be before she had to knock on her door. Daenerys remained steadfast in her determination to meet with the oldest Stark daughter, but she wouldn’t lie and say that she was looking forward to it.

If things between the two of them were to eventually become amicable, it almost certainly meant that the animosities between them would have to be prodded at before they could arrive at a resolution. This would undoubtedly make things uncomfortable during their conversation, but it was something that needed to be done.

Since her arrival in Winterfell, the two women had made it a habit to avoid going where the other was. Should they need to talk, they would instantly busy themselves so that they would have to send someone in their place to deliver the message, as they had to “attend to urgent business.” No one seemed to question it, due to their current predicament, but she had decided that it was not a mature way of conducting business. She could not rule effectively if she was scared of upsetting someone. Daenerys knew that she could not seek out the approval of everyone she was to be governing. If that was how she handled things, she would never get anything accomplished, no matter how long her reign.

Daenerys arrived at the door and delivered it three confident swings. When it was opened, it was not who she had been expecting.

“Brienne, is Lady Sansa in? I wondered if I might be able to speak with her for a moment.” She spoke candidly and to the point, realizing that there was no reason to feign the usual niceties.

Brienne looked over her left shoulder, still having a grasp on the door handle. It was obvious that she, too, was unsure what Sansa’s decision would be.

“Come in,” came a voice from the back of the room.

Sansa’s room had a warm feeling to it. Not only the temperature, which was toasty, but the overall state of it. Jon had told her that it was once their father’s bedroom, which she could now see by a few of the masculine features.

Wrought-iron sconces lined the walls, bearing the sigil of House Stark at the base of them. The chandelier was also made from some sort of iron, but the lit candles that rested on it lessened the cold feeling it gave off. The rug seemed to be made from a rich grey wool, and on it lay two wooden rocking chairs angled toward the fireplace.

It was entirely clear to Daenerys that Sansa had changed very little since it became hers’, but she didn’t blame her at all. The only thing that she had left of her mother’s never left her finger.

Lady Sansa was standing near a bedside table dressed in a dark grey dress, lined with fur. “Please, have a seat,” she stated, once Daenerys had taken in her surroundings.

Daenerys made her way to one of the chairs, settling into it. Once she had sat down, Sansa looked towards her companion. “It’s alright, Brienne. You should go to rest before dinner. It’s unknown how late the council meeting will last tonight.”

Brienne hesitated for a moment, but made her way out of the room with another nod from Sansa. Daenerys was unsure of how the two became acquainted, but she was positive of the loyalty that the woman in armor had towards the red haired Stark. Not many people would be willing to make the journey from Winterfell to King’s Landing to parley with Cersei on behalf of someone other than themselves. She was told that just a few years ago, it would have been seen as an honor to have met with the queen. In recent times, many were doing all they could to avoid the capital, as all it meant was putting yourself in harm’s way.

“You’ll have to forgive her, Your Grace. She didn’t mean it as an insult,” Sansa said as she held out a cup of hot tea. “Brienne is just hesitant of anyone alone with me,” said Sansa. Daenerys detected no inflections in her voice, no hidden meanings. The statement was just said matter-of-factly.

“None taken, Lady Sansa. Loyalty is a powerful thing. She’s devoted to you, that’s never something that you should apologize for, as it means you’ve done something right.”

The two women sat side by side in the chairs facing the fireplace, soaking up its’ radiant heat. After a few quiet moments, Daenerys turned towards Sansa slightly, signaling a desire to hear each other out.

“The reason I’ve come here, is so that I may be able to speak with you alone. I don’t think I have to tell you, that saying I wish we had the opportunity to do this sooner would only be a lie. However, I feel that in putting off this discussion, we have heightened our mistrust in one another.” She paused to take a sip of her tea. “It was a mistake not to have done this sooner. I only know that my mind is running away with assumptions as to what you must think of me, I assume yours might be doing the same?” Daenerys’ lips formed into a tight line once she had thought about what she had said. She presumed that Sansa was thinking of her at all, when she knew how much she hated when others presumed things about her.

Her worries seemed to be for naught when Sansa seemed to give her a light smile with a nod. “We don’t know each other, it’s true. The things that I have assumed of you over the past few months certainly aren’t kind, but my brother seems to value your opinion and I value his.”

As she took another sip of her tea, Daenerys contemplated how civil things had been going so far. She received a friendlier greeting than she imagined she would, and the conversation thus far hadn’t been too snide. Both women seemed to realize that hashing out their differences was truly the best way to move forward – for everyone.

“If you don’t mind me asking, Your Grace, why have you come here? If you had the devotion of so many people, which you say is important, why have you left it for the uncertainty of Westeros?” For a moment, Daenerys thought that she may have presumed the friendliness of their conversation too soon, but Sansa continued. “I’m afraid that came out wrong, but I’m truly curious. I’m trying to understand your motivations, I guess is the best way of putting it simply.”

Daenerys thought for a moment. As of late, even she could sometimes forget her true motivations for sailing to Westeros. Her judgement was fogged with the opinions of those close to her, many of whom were constantly leaving or dying, or being held as a political hostage. She had forgotten what it felt like to be asked what she wanted. Lately, so many had blindly followed, without ever questioning her motivations. While Sansa’s question was brazen, it took courage to ask.

“I’ve come here because I want to give everyone a better life than I had. When my family and my home were ripped from me, before I ever had the chance to understand what I was losing, I was shuffled around. While some years were happier than others, I had no roots; no place to call home. My brother would fill my head with stories about Westeros and the men that had slaughtered our family, and I began to feel a connection to something, no matter how morbid it was looking back now. But in reading the stories about the lands of my ancestor’s home, I began to feel roots sprouting, but my feet did not have solid ground with which to build a life. That wouldn’t change as my brother would later sell me to a Dothraki Khal in exchange for an army.” Daenerys saw Sansa’s eyes widen slightly. “For a time, I had a sense of community, but after the death of my husband, I was left broken and alone. The byproduct of yet another slave dealing gone bad. After the birth of my dragons, I decided that I would try to help all of those who were still being kept in chains, in far worse conditions than I was in, but that after I would return home.”

Sansa didn’t speak for a minute, she just took a slow sip of tea. Presumably, she was searching for what to say next. She had just received a lot of information in a very little amount of time, and it still wasn’t all of it. 

“So, that is my answer to your question. It may not have been the one you were looking for, and you may still mistrust me, but it is true and I stand by it,” Daenerys said, firmly.

Sansa stayed quiet, and when her mouth finally opened, she didn’t say what Daenerys had expected her to.

“He treated you right, the Khal?” Sansa said, looking slightly confused. “You loved him, I mean?”

“Dothraki culture is much different than what someone like you or I may be accustomed to, but yes, he treated me the best that he knew how, I believe. It was because of him that I even believed I would make it to Westeros at all. When I was pregnant with our son, he promised to deliver me my family’s home.” Daenerys stopped talking, pausing to acknowledge the deep pang of pain she still felt in her chest. “They’re both gone now, but my purpose has remained the same.”

Sansa appeared to have relaxed significantly the more she shared with her. Daenerys couldn’t be sure, but she thought that maybe they had finally stumbled onto something they had in common.

“You were the victim of an arranged marriage, as well, if I’ve heard correctly?” Daenerys said carefully.

“Yes, although we can’t all be as lucky as you. We don’t all get a Dothraki horse lord willing to storm a country, now do we?” Sansa said, with an air of playfulness to her tone. “Some of us get men accused of killing their nephews, or men marrying them to steal their family home.” For a moment, her face went serious, but as she lifted her eyes back up to meet Daenerys’, she began to lightly chuckle again.

The two of them sat near the fire, and for the first time since her arrival, Daenerys felt like she wasn’t the only young woman to relate to. She had Missandei, who was irreplaceable, but as much as she valued their friendship, their struggles prior to meeting each other had been entirely different. When she looked at Sansa, she felt as if she had a kindred spirit. Albeit, a kindred spirit that may still despise her after their conversation, but something in common with someone, nonetheless.

“While we’re being honest, might I ask you just one more thing?” Sansa prodded.

“You don’t need to ask my permission to engage in conversation, Lady Sansa.” Daenerys returned lightheartedly. “All that I know is yours to question, as it is with everyone else, should they have the courage to ask.”

Sansa bit her lip before she continued.

“Do you love my brother?” she added quickly.

Daenerys was taken aback by her blatant question. While Jon had informed her that the others may have guessed that something was going on between the two of them, she didn’t know the extent of it. She supposed that in her efforts to avoid conflict with them, she missed their suspicions entirely.

“Not everyone can show up to a queen’s door asking for dragonglass, and then make them forget their very intentions in the first place,” she reminded her. “but Jon did.” She let out the breath that she had been holding, as she heard a log crack in the fireplace.

“I didn’t believe him at first; I didn’t want to. It sounded like complete nonsense, but he was persistent. He walked into my chambers demanding that I halt my plans against Cersei to help him. He never held back in telling me what he thought, which as much of a suicide mission as it could have been for him, was refreshing for me to hear at the time. I just didn’t know it. In fact, he’s reminded me of many things I have forgotten over the years.”

“After the war, assuming we even make it out alive, what then?”

“Between Jon and I?” Daenerys said, as she paused a moment. She would be lying if she said she hadn’t thought about it. However, when the thought did enter her mind, it was one of the rare times in which she favored the scenario in which they lost to the Night King. Should they survive, they would finally be confronted with the task of figuring things out. With their positions in the world, marrying for true love was a rare occurrence when there were many other things to consider. She suspected that the two of them marrying would cause for separation between kingdoms as opposed to unification. Most of the northerners were upset that she even stepped foot in the country at all, so outrage at the thought of the two of them marrying was predicted. Should they survive, it would likely mean their separation for good, which at the moment was an extremely sobering realization for Daenerys.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, trying to remain cool, “I’m sure there will be more pressing issues after the war.” Suddenly, Daenerys was yearning for the comfort of her own chambers.

“Yes, I suppose so,” Sansa said delicately, predictably aware of the lines she may have crossed in normal societal standards for Ladies.

“Well, I believe I’ll be taking my dinner in my chambers this evening. Shall I tell the kitchen to send yours up here, as well?” Sansa asked.

Daenerys knew that she had not  actually  wanted her to have dinner with her, so much as it was a hint that she wanted to be left alone. A hint, which she thought, was warmly welcomed at the moment. As productive as their conversation had been, it had accidentally also stirred up unresolved feelings regarding many things in her past and present.

“No, no thank-you, though. However, I believe I’ll be doing the same in my chambers. I spent ages up in the air flying around earlier, and I still don’t think my body has warmed up fully. A nice hot bath will be welcomed before our gathering this evening.” Daenerys said, standing up out of her chair.

“Yes, well I suppose I will see you there,” Sansa said as she went for the door knob. “I’m glad we’ve talked. While I know we still don’t see eye to eye on every issue, I understand your intentions a bit more now, I believe.”

“As am I, Lady Sansa,” Daenerys said before leaving the room.

**IV. Tyrion**

Tyrion had spent his day, in the library, listening to Varys yammer on about the happenings in the rest of the kingdom, but he couldn’t bring himself to care about much of any of it.

When Varys would share a piece of information that his little birds had sent him, whether it was the affair that Martin Mandrake was having on his pregnant wife, or the secret marriage between the youngest Buckwell and his Braavosi bride, nothing that his ears heard seemed to be able to tear his eyes, and mind, away from his books.

Samwell Tarly was also there, but was as quiet as a mouse as he sat in an old wooden armchair at the corner of the room. Therefore, the gossip, designed to be a talking piece by Varys to occupy himself, went largely ignored by the two bookworms.

It had been two hours since the eunuch left them to the words of others, and six since he had first cracked a book earlier in the morning. Neither man was any closer to finding anything that could be of some use against the army of the dead, but this fact did not surprise him. For days the two of them had occupied this room, pouring through titles that were long thought lost to the world. Although the North was not his favorite place in the world, Winterfell’s library was one of the most immaculate collections that he had ever seen.

Tyrion decided that if he was to continue the mental hell that he had signed himself up for, he would need another cup of wine to dull the pain, so he made his way up from his chair and over to the bottle.

“Can I interest you in a glass of,” he said as he read the brown bottle, “Winterfell Arbor’s Finest?” Tyrion chucked to himself as he poured a glass. “It tastes like piss, but it does the job after your tongue gets used to the taste of the dirt.”

Sam lifted his nose from his book and gave him a slight smile.

“No, no thank you. I’d better not. My mind is sharper without the stuff to tell you the truth.”

Tyrion walked over towards Sam, anyway, handing him a glass filled to the rim with the burgundy colored liquid.

“Take a break. You’ve been here more than I have, and besides,” he said, as he took the book from his hands, “I don’t believe you need to be at your sharpest whilst reading, “Maester Kraken’s Recollection of Winterfell”, Gods Tarly, your read is even duller than I’d once assumed. Whatever are you looking at this for? It’s a Winterfell maester’s journal from hundreds of years ago.”

“That’s precisely the point, it’s a Winterfell maester’s journal from hundreds of years ago, but it wasn’t with the rest of the journals that other maester’s have donated to the library. I found this one at the Citadel. Doesn’t that seem peculiar to you?”

As Tyrion saw the young man’s confused face, he did have to admit that it was strange. Dozens of maesters that had served in Winterfell, including even Maester Luwin, had donated their journals to the library, where they had been collecting dust ever since. Almost all of them had been dull reads, filled with problems such as food shortages and economic issues, but none of them contained anything even remotely related to their current problem.

“Yes, I do suppose that’s odd. However, if you’ve had this since the Citadel, correct me if I’m wrong, but you’ve already read over it. This book is over four hundred years old, so I’m going to venture a guess and say that Maester Kraken isn’t writing any new entries that would be of some use. What do you think you’re missing?” Tyrion asked, nonchalantly with a slight sarcastic tone.

Sam sat back in his chair for a moment, as if he had never considered the answer to that question before. “I… I don’t know. Before I left the Citadel, I lifted a few books from a restricted section, this being one of them. I didn’t think much of it at the time, I just saw that it came out of Winterfell and that it might have a better chance of holding useful information than some of the others. However, just last night, I started wondering why it hadn’t been with the rest. I mean, why isn’t it? If it just got misplaced at some point in history and ended up at the Citadel, that’s one thing. But the restricted section under lock and key?”

By now, Tyrion was beginning to understand the young man’s thought-process. The situation was a peculiar one indeed.

“Do you mind if I take a look? A pair of fresh eyes might do us some good,” he said as he held out his hand.

“Be my guest. Maybe you’ll have more luck than I’ve had with it. Maester Kraken’s writings tend to be a bit erratic,” Sam said as he handed him the journal. “I read in Maester Elbis’ journal, he was the one after him, that everyone thought Kraken was bloody insane. He was forced to step down from his post early, as everyone thought that he was losing his mind. From looking at his writings, I believe it. The man doesn’t make a lick of sense at all for pages at a time.”

Tyrion sat down, flipping through the pages of the old maester’s journal. He thought, while reading the man’s most intimate thoughts, that he was glad he had never kept a journal. The thought of having someone, hundreds of years from now, reading every detail he had ever thought, was certainly an uncomfortable one.

Everything that the man had thought about during his days, from how many eggs he had a breakfast, to who he would have liked to have seen dead, all of it was here; scattered throughout pages of nonsensical writings, as well.

\---

After what felt like hours of trying to sift through the nonsense, something at the bottom right corner, about halfway through the book, caught his eye.

To many others, it would have seemed like more nonsense, but it was a specific word that made him take a second look; “juniper.” While the juniper tree was common in the Reach, he knew that it did not grow in places with colder climates. This would make it all but impossible for it to be found in the North.

Juniper was nestled in between two unfamiliar words, but as he took a closer look, he saw a few that he recognized. A few that he recognized, all too well.

“I don’t believe it…,” he quietly let out in a breath of disbelief.

“What?” said Sam, walking over towards him. “Did you find something?”

Tyrion hadn’t heard him as his mind was still racing. He wouldn’t let his eyes look up from the spot, for fear if he did, it would disappear forever.

“Lord Tyrion?”

He ran his fingers over the ink forming the words, as if trying to absorb the potential savior that might be. Tyrion took a deep gulp, fighting the tear that was threatening to fall.

“Years ago, while I was serving as Hand of the King to my nephew, an alchemist took me through the tunnels underneath of King’s Landing where they kept the unused wildfire of Aerys Targaryen. Once I’d seen and heard what it was capable of, I tasked them with making new batches of it; batches that were used to fend off Stannis Baratheon in the Battle of the Blackwater. Even back then I knew not to trust anyone at the capital, so I ordered the rare ingredients for the concoction myself for the alchemists to continue growing our supply. While I can’t know for sure if it will react the same way, as they wouldn’t tell me how it was made, the basic formula remains the same.”

Sam looked at Tyrion for a moment, puzzled.

“I- I’m sorry, I’m not following. We have the recipe for wildfire?”

Tyrion took a sip of wine, feeling the warmth of it trickle down his stomach. He glanced back at Samwell Tarly, finally sitting down the book.

“No, I’m afraid we might have something better.”

**V. Arya**

“What are you doing here?” said Arya, in a biting tone.

Gendry looked up from the spear that he had been carving, his eyes widening with every passing second of silence.

Arya was growing increasingly annoyed. How long had he been here? From the sound of it, longer than was acceptable to go without saying hello.

“Gendry! I said,  what are you doing here?”

He parted his mouth to speak, but then closed it again.

Arya stood with her arms crossed, continuing to stare him down, refusing to speak again until he did.

“I…, haven’t you talked to your brother?” he said, wrinkling his forehead. “Isn’t it fairly obvious what I’m doing here?” he said as he held his knife and spear up in the air.

“Yes, I’ve talked to my brother. It’s precisely the reason I found out you were here to begin with.” Down in the crypts when she’d heard Jon say Gendry’s name, she’d thought it had been a mistake; either that or she heard it wrong. However, her suspicions were quickly confirmed when Jon had said that he had been collecting Valyrian steel. As relieved as she was to hear that he was alive, she was hurt that he’d known he was here in her home, with her there too, and he hadn’t even tried to seek her out.

“I assume your time with the Brotherhood went according to plan?” she questioned, knowingly.

Gendry could see that she already knew the answer to her own question, a sign of all their time spent together all those years ago.

“Something like that,” he said hastily, beginning to hack away at the dragonglass again.

Arya removed her sword and dagger from her waist before hoisting herself up onto his workbench at the other side of the table. She gazed at him a moment, watching him work, before deciding to not let him off the hook so easily.

“Honestly Gendry, it didn’t occur to you that maybe I would like to know that you’re alive?” Arya looked at him with an icy stare, careful not to let herself show too much.

“Oh, piss off, Arya!” he said, with an air of disdain, “You’ve been here, too. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve not seen you make your way to this section of the grounds yet.” He wasn’t wrong, she thought.

Although she’d known about him being in Winterfell for a few days, she couldn’t bring herself to see him until this morning. Why? That she hadn’t entirely known.

“That’s different and you know it,” Arya said, as she intensified her glare, “We’re not in some random village, Gendry. You’re here in my home; in Winterfell. You’re friends with my brother, and if you try to tell me that it didn’t occur to you, well then you can just fuck right off.” The rage that she had been feeling at him all these years, after he’d made the decision to leave her on her own, it was finally bubbling to the surface.

Gendry looked at her out of the corner of his eyes for a brief moment before he set down what he was working on, and wiped off his hands.

“Arya…” he said, trying to ease his way into the conversation, she assumed. It was another prolonged minute before he chose to speak again.

“Arya, I- I didn’t know if you’d want to see me here. It sounds like an excuse, I know that… but it’s the truth.” His face softened slightly, leaving her with more questions than answers.

“If it sounds like an excuse than it probably is one,” she replied, quickly. After the words had left her lips, she scolded herself for her venomous tongue. She watched as she saw his eyes fall.

It was clear to her that he was apprehensive to say too much, so she decided to say it for him.

“You chose not to return to Winterfell with me, but now you’re here anyway. Mental how the world works sometimes, isn’t it?” she said, softer, as she re-laced her shoe, desperate to focus on something else for a moment.

Gendry cleared his throat while he fidgeted with his fingers.

“I never thought that I would see you again. I made peace with it, but I never stopped worrying about you out there. Arya, you have to know that when I chose to stay with the Brotherhood, I thought that I was doing it with both of our best interests in mind.”

Arya stiffened, saying, “It makes sense to me now, but I won’t lie and say that I didn’t resent you for a while after we said goodbye. I fear that I still do, just a bit.”

It was obvious that he didn’t know what to say to that, so he just returned to chiseling away at the spearhead. The two fell into a period of silence that could have been seconds or hours long, it didn’t matter to Arya. As she watched him work at his craft, she allowed her mind to wonder what might have been if he had come with her.

“I haven’t met your other siblings yet, but Jon’s a good man…” he said, breaking the silence to fill the silence. It occurred to her that he might not have been as comfortable with it as she had.

“He is, but so are you,” Arya whispered. “Don’t forget that. I’ll never say it again,” she said with a mocking tone.

Gendry’s soft eyes drifted up to meet her own, allowing her to feel like the young girl she had never had the chance to be.

**VI. Jaime**

While the people were filing into the room, Jaime allowed his eyes to scan around them. The room had a cozy aura to it, despite the weather outside. However, that may be why it felt so cozy to him.

Since his arrival, the weather surrounding Winterfell, and likely the whole of the North, had changed drastically. Where it was cold before, it felt like the whole world must have been frozen now. The ground outside was harder and colder than it had ever felt before, causing the grass beneath the thick blanket of snow to feel like one could be walking on stone.

The thick canvas tents that many of the smallfolk had been using for shelter outside of the gates were no longer doable, even with the small firepits that several of them had dug out in them for heat. Because of this, it was decided by the queen and Jon Snow that Winterfell and all of its’ small buildings would be used to house as many as could fit into them. Although he didn’t have an exact number for the amount of refugees present, Jaime estimated that about eight to ten thousand people had come to Winterfell for shelter and to aid the armies in battle. This created very tight living quarters, leaving even the hallways and the crypt to be used as space for sleeping. How every one of them fit was still astonishing to him.

The beautiful thing about their current situation was that no one complained. It seemed to be, at least for the moment, a universal truth among them that everyone was doing the most that they could, the best that they could. Mothers were taking care of children that weren’t theirs, strangers were sleeping huddled together under blankets night after night, and every day more and more men were signing up to fight, even when they weren’t a member of anyone’s army.

It seemed to Jaime, that many had realized that these were going to be some of their last days, so they might as well enjoy them to the best of their ability. Tyrion had told him than morale significantly lessened when he delivered the news of Cersei’s betrayal, compared to what it had been before he arrived. However, in recent days, there was less sorrow than he ever imagined there would be. When he looked around at dinnertime, he saw smiles and even sometimes laughing. He couldn’t help but wonder if that was due to the attitudes displayed by Daenerys Targaryen and Jon Snow, their chosen leaders in this war.

He wondered if morale would have been this high if Cersei  had shown up with her armies. It might have been, Jaime thought to himself, but it would have plummeted once the people got a true look at their official queen. She wouldn’t have been concerned about the lives of her people out in the arctic temperatures, and she sure as hell wouldn’t have opened up her home to them.

As Jaime’s attention was drawn back to the room, he saw many people that he knew, and some old faces from a lifetime past. Sitting at the heads of the giant wooden table were the queen and Jon Snow. Tyrion, Randall Tarly’s son, Davos Seaworth, Jorah Mormont, Brienne, Tormund the wilding, Yohn Royce, Beric Dondarrion, the Hound, a woman named Missandei, and the Stark children were just the ones that he recognized. Standing behind them were a handful of lords and ladies representing their houses, and one Dothraki and one Unsullied. 

It was a strange group to see gathered into one place, and Jaime assumed that if someone had told him a few years ago who he would have been aligned with today, he would have spit in their face for making such accusations. Everyone in the room had, at one point or another, served a different king or queen. He supposed that if they destined to die here, how ironic that it wouldn’t be at the hands of one another.

“Thank you for all staying up late to be here. I know how exhausted you all must be,” the queen said, looking quite exhausted herself, “Nevertheless, we thought it was best to meet before the Night King caught us off guard. It would be hard for him to make the weather much more worse than it already is, so it seems that we know what to prepare for in terms of battlefield terrain, now.” She was relaxed into her chair, but Jaime noticed that her hands were tightly gripping the arms of it, turning her knuckles white.

Jon Snow cleared this throat before pointing to the map laid out in front of them. “I’ve been thinking about the formation for battle, and this is what I’ve come up with so far. Queen Daenerys will be in the air with her dragons providing us with coverage from up above. Her armies will be just outside the gates at the front, with the Northmen to spread out and provide men where it is needed. Jorah Mormont, you are an accomplished fighter and a true Northman. It would be my honor if you would help me to lead the right side, while I’m on the left with the other half.”

All eyes in the room suddenly turned to the once-exiled bear, whose face expressed a fair amount of surprise.

“The honor is mine,” he replied with a small, gracious nod. Although there had been a few whispers at the back of the room, no one objected to the decision.

“Lord Beric and Sandor Clegane, you will lead the men that have no allegiances with any houses, if that is alright?” the queen asked.

Beric Dondarrion’s face lit up with a warm smile, causing his cheek to wrinkle around the edges of his eyepatch. “It is more than alright, Your Grace.”

Everyone’s eyes shifted to the Hound to see if he felt the same, and he nodded with a grunt.

“Ser Jaime and Brienne, you will begin the battle on the walls of the castle with Ser Davos to help guide people out. After everyone had assumed their battle positions, you two will help wherever necessary. We trust you to use your judgement as to where you feel that will be, when the time comes,” the silver-haired queen said confidently.

This was best case scenario for Jaime, as he was fighting alongside someone whom he trusted without a shadow of a doubt.

“Some of the Vale will control the trenches, but the majority will, of course, be under the command of Lord Royce, where they will surround the walls of the castle all the way around. They will truly be our last line of defense,” said Jon in a more serious tone.

The Tarly boy stood up from his seat and said, “If- If I may, Lord Tyrion and I would like to share something that we found at the library that may  truly  be our last line of defense.”

Everyone in the room stilled, waiting to hear what they had found.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter I promise the story will start progressing at a faster pace, and will pick up exactly where it left off. I’ve just been trying to lay the groundwork for the rest of the story.  
> I look forward to reading all your comments!


	4. Do You Have Time for a Story?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's taken so long to update. I feel horrible! This summer I started this story with the belief that I could update weekly, but as soon as school started, I realized that it was an entirely unrealistic goal with my schedule. I'll be honest and tell you all that from now on, it'll be updated when it gets updated. (p.s. Sorry for any typos. I'll go back and edit any mistakes, but I was just excited to get this updated once I'd finished it for those still interested in following along.) Other than that, enjoy!

**I. Tyrion**

The room was still. The air was thick and dense; not just because everyone was sitting on the edges of their seats, but because the fire was roaring deeply within the fireplace. The heat cascaded through the rooms of Winterfell, enveloping everyone into a false sense of security. If their shelter was warm, they could forget about the cold winds raging outside.

Tyrion cleared his throat, suddenly unable to share the information that had brought him so much excitement only moments ago. “As some of you know, Samwell and I have been all but residing in the library as of late, seeking temporary solace in the comfort of those who came before us,” he said as he pushed himself up from his chair, forcing the blood to run through his legs as he made his announcement, “For years, alchemists’ have secretly been at work in the capital, furthering the crown’s supply of wildfire. Their process is strict and secret. The art of producing such a substance is specific. As such, those who have operated King’s Landing, through the years, people such as my sister, could afford to make a premium substance with unlimited funds with the help of the crown’s contract with the Iron Bank.”

As he paused to let the others digest the information, he saw a knowing look from some, and blank stares from others less familiar with the travesty the weapon has the power to inflict.

“Decades ago, when news of this new substance reached Winterfell, it was not taken lightly. Behind closed doors, the Starks and their Maester were working to counter it, should it ever find its’ way up North to be used against them. However, Winterfell couldn’t afford to be as selective with their ingredients for the substance. Nevertheless, thanks to their famed Northern stubbornness, they developed an equally deadly, but even less secure substance. Thankfully, the Kingdom remained at peace and it was never needed and therefore used. Until now.”

Tyrion stopped talking and allowed his body to relax. “This is the answer to our problem. I am not positive of many things in the world, but I am positive of this. If anything in the world has a shot at holding them off… it’s this.”

He spots the queen and Jon Snow exchange a quick look with one another. “You’re both in agreement that this will work?,” she asks with a raised brow.

“Lord Tyrion speaks truly. This is our best course of action,” Sam says quietly. If you didn’t know how meek the man could be at times, one could mistake his volume for uncertainty.

“And,” Tyrion replies, “supposing that we make it out of this fight alive, the substance could prove to be useful in the fight against Cersei.”

Lord Royce made a scoffing sound, “You can’t possibly mean to use this against other people, my Lord?,” he says, righteously.

“Cersei has.”

All eyes in the room turned to his brother.

Jaime looked around, seeing that all eyes were set on him. He looked down to his hands, whose knuckles were softly tapping the table in thought. Finally, he spoke. “She has, and we would be foolish to believe that she won’t do the same again,” Jaime says matter-of-factly.

Yohn Royce pinched his face in, carefully tightening his lips as well, as not to allow anything vengeful out.

It was very clear where he stood on the issue, but Tyrion knew that he couldn’t and would never understand fully. There was no way for him to begin to comprehend the level at which the two parties would be fighting each other, as Royce had never seen his sister in action. Cersei has nothing left, allowing her to operate without feeling things like guilt or compassion. If they were to fight her, blood was surely to be spilled. With this, they could have some say in who loses more of it.

“We should start mixing it right away, if it pleases you, Your Grace. It will take many hours to build up a sufficient supply if it’s meant to kill off the whole army,” Sam interjected, looking at his new queen carefully.

“Yes, of course, and anything you should need we will provide to you, correct?,” she said, looking toward Jon for confirmation.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Sansa said, as she looked upon the others, “If we make this substance that you speak of that’s like wildfire, how will we control it’s usage in the future? How do we know we aren’t just making more weapons of warfare to be used to cause devastation like King’s Landing has seen now twice over?” Her tone was friendly and not pointed, but still, Tyrion couldn’t help but be irritated by her in this moment. Chances are, she would never truly get southern politics the way Cersei ran southern politics. Although Sansa is more aware than most, it was moments like these that reminded Tyrion that she was still only a child. A child who had seen devastation first hand, experienced it first hand, but still a child nonetheless.

“As of this moment, two people know what it takes to make this substance,” said Daenerys looking towards Samwell and Tyrion. “The number of those involved will stay small and confidential, and special precautions will be taken to control the information shared among those after this is over.”

“Sam, work quickly. At most they’re a couple of days out. Anything you need, Winterfell will provide,” Jon replied with finality.

Sam nodded and then bowed before making his way out of the room in a quick shuffle, his feet struggling to keep up with the pace his mind seemed to be moving him along.

After that, a few other small decisions were made concerning food distribution and weapon distribution, but the meeting mostly teetered off quickly. This left Tyrion with the rest of the evening to consider the many possible outcomes that would be theirs’ in the coming days.

It was astonishing to him that all of this build up over the last few months, along with all of the moments lost considering ones’ own existence, will have all been for naught. Either way, win or lose, none of it will be of any concern to him. Should they die, they’re dead; what will he care? Should they live, he will have other obstacles to distract him from the past on their road ahead.

As he shuffled his way into his chambers for the night, he hovered by the candle light to tuck into the comfort of an old book; he could imagine no better ending to a cold and snowy evening.

**II. Daenerys**

The sound of the crackling logs was music to her ears as Daenerys readied herself for bed. The day had been a long one, and tomorrow promised much of the same. Still, she found herself not wanting to miss one moment. In no time at all, she could enter an eternal sleep and although she can’t know for sure, Daenerys felt strongly that “dead” her would be outraged at herself for sleeping when she could be living in the moments as they were happening.

Due to the strenuous preparations, she also had very little contact with anyone other than Tyrion or Varys. No matter what time of the day it was, one of them could always be found buzzing around, whispering mostly unneeded information into her ears. Any other time their information would be important and valid, but these were different times. The stakes were much higher, and quite frankly, Daenerys couldn’t bring herself to care about Lord whatever’s daughter’s wedding, that Varys thought was of the utmost importance. Business like that paled in comparison to what laid ahead.

While sitting on the edge of the bed, she sat swirling the warm tea in her cup, letting it warm her hands. Sipping on it, she felt the rush of the heat trickle its’ way down her body. For a moment, this was the only thing she focused on. In this moment, she knew that she could fall asleep easily but she willed herself to keep her eyes open, for she would not miss their only opportunity to see one another tonight, as well.

How much time passed, she did not know, but her eyes opened at the sound of the door creaking open. It seemed an odd prospect; finding solace in another’s presence was an idea almost entirely foreign to her. However, as she laid on the bed in his ancestral home, Daenerys saw the person that felt more like home to her than any other place she’d been before.

Daenerys watched as he unstrapped the belt which held his sword and propped it up against the wall. She watched as he stripped out of his outerwear to reveal the thin layers underneath before folding everything up and sitting it in front of the fireplace. She watched everything, careful to memorize it all just the way it was.

Although she was exhausted and fatigued, as he made his way toward the bed, she allowed her head to roll onto its’ side on the pillow so that she could breathe in the scent that was now entirely associated with him.

Daenerys felt as Jon slowly brought his hand up to the side of her head, gently brushing the small stands of hair out of her eyes that she’d only been too tired to move before. She knew that he thought her to be asleep, so for a moment she basked in his unawareness. For a moment, she allowed his lingering gaze to warm her body as she savored the sobering feeling of humanity.

She considered herself lucky to be able to see him in moments like this; moments where he was unguarded and at ease. The hardened and battle-scarred face that he presented to the world could be mistaken for permanence by those who hardly knew him, but she knew the truth.

She knew that although he liked to wear his hair tied up like his father used to, the minute he retreated behind closed doors for the evening it was the first thing he set about undoing. She knew that although he thought he couldn’t fall asleep without his thick wool socks on, he would kick them off in his sleep every night anyway. She also knew that if Jon was aware of the fact that he was so predictable, he would try to fight the facts to prove her wrong. So this night, just like all of their others before it, she would say nothing and silently bask in the fact that she had someone to know like this at all.

“Do I have holes in the side of my head yet?,” Daenerys said with a thin and tired voice, eyes still closed.

She knew that she had caught him off guard with her response as it took him a few seconds to form a rebuttal.

“Don’t see how I’m supposed to tell behind all that hair,” Jon replied back, clearly deflecting from being caught in the act. She could hear the grin in his voice.

Daenerys opened her eyes slowly so that she could meet his. She brought her hand up to cup his face, and as she traced the stubble of his beard with her thumb, not a word was spoken between the two.

This delicate moment between the two was not a foreign sentiment as of late. As one would imagine, the life of a monarch is an arduous one, with many people needing tended to; many issues needing resolved. As a result, their time spent together in Winterfell has consisted of stolen glances at dinner and stolen moments before bed. 

“I still feel like an outsider,” she said in the faintest of whispers, as if what she was saying could be held against her someday. “The people are polite, or at least they try to be – but, I still see the looks on their faces. They hold no love for me, Jon.”

His face softened and his head tilted further into the pillow as he gave her a sympathetic look.

It was selfish of her to put him in this position, she knew it was. There was nothing he could do about it. It’s not like he could very well go around and start enforcing mandatory smiles from all that crosses her path; no, that wouldn’t be diplomatic. For now, the act of confiding her feelings in someone is comfort enough to calm the storm raging within her mind.

“I fear their rejection… not because it is rejection, but of what it could do to me. My father thought that he was losing control of his kingdom. He wasn’t really, but he poisoned his own reign with his feelings of inadequacy. And as he sat on his Iron Throne, grasping for power, he succumbed to the madness.” She took a deep breath to calm her thoughts before continuing,

“Not for the first time in my life, but for the first time in a long while, I feel inadequate. Nothing that I say or do is enough to prove that I’m here to fight for the North, so where does that leave me? There are seven kingdoms that will have me as their queen, but none that truly want it.”

Jon sat up in the bed and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes before setting his focus on Daenerys.

“If that was your long way of trying to say that you’re afraid of being like your father, I’m here to tell you that you’re wrong,” Jon said gently, recognizing the fragility of her emotions in the moment.

“You can’t know that, Jon; no one can,” she said, visibly ashamed to be harboring feelings such as these.

“I do,” he said with finality, “This conversation is proof of that. Do you think your father sat on the throne worrying if he was going down the wrong path?” Although these words were formed as a question, Jon left her no time to respond. Letting her know that it wasn’t question, but a statement. “Inadequate rulers don’t take time out of their days to ponder their possible inadequacy; they act without regard for what others are thinking. They rule with an iron-fist, never planting a seed of doubt in their advisors heads as they don’t care what they think. I’ll tell you, Dany, how I know you are a capable leader,” Jon said as he grasped for her hand. “Because you’re afraid that you’re not. That’s not a sign of madness, just a sign humanity, which is more than this country has had in a long time.”

Although this conversation consisted mainly of Jon talking to her, it was more than they’d been able to utter to each other in weeks. This night was the closest thing they’d had to the nights like on the ship. Now they _knew_ each other and had to pleasure of sharing many different burdens, or gifts. However it was she chose to look at these things depended on the day.

Even though Daenerys had been able to let a little bit of the pressure that she had been feeling off of her chest, she still knew that she had been holding back. If she let him know everything that she knew, everything that she felt, she wondered if he would look at it as a burden or a gift?

As Dany looked into his gazing eyes and opened her mouth to finally get the answer to that question that she had been asking herself for some time now, she discovered that it would have to wait.

A loud and steady knock was continuing on at the door, showing no sign of stopping until the knocker received a response from within.

“Who is it?,” Jon called out, his tone short and exhausted. He knew as well as she did that there was no point in wishing them away, as this was life. Just as it was hers.

“Jon,” was all the familiar voice said. The two of them looked at each other knowing that this was a matter of at least some urgency. Ser Davos knew that the two of them had been running on little to no sleep recently, so he wouldn’t be knocking on their door at this hour if he didn’t have to.

Jon made his way up from the bed to throw on some more clothes, but Daenerys stayed in the same place she had been resting for a few hours now. They had no need to hide anything from the man who had been there to witness everything as it was from the beginning.

Her curly haired lover turned the door knob, revealing the Onion knight in all his glory. His eyes scanned Jon’s body before saying, “Don’t know why you felt the need to do all this,” he said, his hands motioning to Jon’s layers of clothing. “-t’s not anything I haven’t seen before, or were you just hoping I’d forgotten that I’d seen your pecker?”

Jon grinned slightly, but his face still showed his exhaustion. “It’s late Davos. What do you need?”

“I know that it’s late, but I’m afraid this can’t wait. A visitor has arrived that wishes to speak with you immediately.”

Jon looked back at Daenerys, giving her a look that she knew to be him asking her if this was some sort of joke. “It’s only a few hours until the sun is up. It can’t wait?,” he said as he looked back at Davos.

“Afraid not. I fear that those still outside of Winterfell’s gates don’t seem to care what hour of the night it is when they’re running for their lives to shelter. I don’t have the slightest clue as to what this is about, but I told the guard standing with the guest that you would need some time to gather yourself. I’ll be waiting for you at the bottom of the staircase when you’re ready.” And with that, Davos was gone from their door as quickly as he had appeared, giving Jon no chance to object to their late-night rendezvous.

Before walking out the door, Jon walked back over to the bed to place a soft kiss on her forehead. “When this is all over, I promise you there will be a day when no one will be able to interrupt what we were about to do. Even when they’re begging us to stop to take a break.”

Dany gave him a slight smile before he walked out.

She looked forward to that day, but tonight, she was glad that it had been interrupted.

**III. Jon**

Usually Jon tried to channel his father’s gift of innate hospitality. Ned Stark had always felt that Winterfell was not just their home, but it was also a home to all who needed it. At this particular moment in time, Jon couldn’t remember why is was that this had become the standard.

As a child, he knew that his father had many important duties to attend to, but Jon never knew that the ones Ned probably dreaded the most were the duties that required him to leave his bed in the dead of night when someone arrived, swearing that it couldn’t wait until morning.

Davos knew better than to make small talk when Jon was tired, so the two of them walked silently to the Great Room.

When they arrived, Jon was surprised to find Bran awake and sitting in front of the fireplace. As he looked at him, he found that his brother was no interested in his arrival, as he had his gaze set on something else; someone else.

Standing to Bran’s left was a man that Jon had never met. Not only was this someone he had never seen, but his garments were unfamiliar to him as well. His clothing displayed no visible recognizable house or sigils, only mud and muck.

Jon tried to remember all that Maester Luwin had taught them as children about the crannogmen, but at this hour of the night, all he could remember was that they resided in the Neck.

“My Lord, my name is Howland Reed, Lord of Greywater Watch, and an old friend of your father.”

Suddenly, Jon’s felt his demeanor change and he extended a handshake toward the man. He didn’t know much about Howland Reed, but he recalled his father telling him as a boy that he would have fallen against Ser Arthur Dayne during the rebellion had it not been for the man standing in front of him. That was good enough for Jon.

“Welcome to Winterfell, my Lord. I would offer to walk the ground with you to give you a look around, but I assume someone greater than I has already been given the pleasure,” Jon said, referring to his father.

“You assume wrongly, my Lord. It is true that I have been to Winterfell before, but only just once. It was on business, then, so there was no time for pleasantries. I’m afraid the same can be said for tonight. Will you join me in having a seat?,” Howland Reed said before gesturing toward a table.

By now, Jon was intrigued with the man, and all thoughts of anger or resentment that he had going into their meeting were washed away, leaving only questions and intrigue as to what could have brought him all this way, at this hour.

“Forgive me, but what I have to say concerns matters of the family,” said the guest, clearly trying to politely dismiss Davos from the room. Jon couldn’t blame him as he would have done the same. However, that would not suffice.

“Ser Davos is an advisor and close friend. There’s no point in him leaving, as just as soon as this meeting comes to an end, I would tell him everything anyway. Might as well cut out the stuff in the middle,” Jon said, reminding Davos that he always had a place.

“Very well.” Lord Reed paused for a moment, furrowing his brow before continuing. “The story that I’m about to tell you was never mine to tell. Certainly I never thought that it was a matter that I would ever have to concern myself with again; I never wanted to. However, these are dark times. I don’t have to tell you about finding ourselves in situations we never wanted to be in, my Lord.” He took another long pause and it seemed, at least to Jon, that he was having trouble finding words.

“Lord Jon never imagined that he would have to leave the Night’s Watch to lead the North against the enemy, but he’s done a pretty damn good job of it from I can tell,” Davos said, with an air of defensiveness over his sworn leader.

“Thank you, Ser Davos, but I don’t think that is what he is referring to. He means to say that, I, a bastard, never thought that I would find myself the lord of Winterfell,” Jon replied, allowing his tone to form his statement as more of question that a fact.

“Precisely that. You’re correct. I make no comment on your leadership skills, as I don’t know you. However, your advisor is right. There’s very few people in the world that would be able to gather a crowd of this size to aide them in fighting an enemy. Not only that, but there’s very few that would want to. At the very least, your father’s heart seems to have rubbed off onto your own.”

Through the years Jon had received a lot of compliments. He had received compliments based on his performance on the battlefield, and he had received compliments based on his leadership skills. Although they were appreciated, in respect to being a fighter, they meant very little.

Plenty of people in the world have the skills to swing a sword or lead an army, and Jon always felt uneasy accepting compliments over something that almost always required him to take a life. However, the compliments his ears always cherished were the ones that compared him to his father. Jon knew that although he would never be as precious or adored as his father, it gave him comfort to know that others hadn’t forgotten his life or what he stood for. So, in a way, he viewed these compliments given to him as people not forgetting Ned Stark or his legacy. Jon could only ever be happy when this would occur.

“I haven’t done it on my own, but you’re correct. My father was a great man. I tell myself that if I can lead my people even half as well as him, I’m doing alright,” he replied, truly genuine.

“That he was. Should have been king, but I don’t need to tell you boys that he never had a taste for that kind of thing,” Howland stared around the room before crossing his hands. “I do have to tell you, however, that even in my wildest dreams all those years ago, I never thought that it would be I, that would be the deliverer of such information. I thought about leaving well enough alone. I told myself, after I heard about the death of your Uncle Benjen, that it wasn’t my place. But the country that you’ll be living in, if you live, isn’t the country that we fought for all those years ago. A few weeks ago, I decided that I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself if you died never knowing the truth. Picked a hell of a time to decide that, didn’t I? I seem to be cutting it rather close.”

Jon would agree with him that he picked a hell of a time to be relaying vital information, but he was having trouble seeing how any of this concerned him. “Forgive me, my lord, I don’t consider myself to be the smartest man to roam the world, but I don’t believe that I’m the dumbest either, so I have to admit that I’m having trouble following,”

“That’s not your fault, as I seem to be beating around the bush. I think that it would be better if I started from the beginning. Do you have time for a story?,” he asked. Although Jon wasn’t going to tell him no, he found himself thinking of his warm bed and the woman in it waiting for him.

Even though they had spent many years apart and he was nowhere close to the same boy that he had been when Jon went north, Bran seemed to know what he was thinking. “He has the time,” his brother replied in his even-toned voice.

Howland Reed seemed to accept this as a good-enough answer so Jon settled into his seat already surmising that they would be here for some time.

“The rebellion was brutal, and it didn’t matter what side you were on, everyone knew that there would be no winners. Of course it was indisputable, the outcome would decide who ruled and that surely does require some sort of _winner_ , but at what cost did they win? Everyone had already lost too much; _been through_ too much… After what had happened with Lyanna and Rhaegar at the Tourney of Harrenhall, and then later with the deaths of your grandfather and uncle, Ned had no choice but to fight alongside Robert. Lots of big families had lost a lot during the war, but I don’t think that there’s anyone in the country that would argue that there was another family out there that had lost more than you Starks. Except of course the Targaryens, perhaps. We did all witness the fall of the Targaryen dynasty,” he furrowed his brow before continuing, and Jon felt his throat tighten. Although he knew that it was too much to hope for, he wished that this story would deliver him the information that he had so desperately craved his entire life. For the time being, at least it seemed to be.

“The battle had been raging on for some time. Robert had already delivered his fatal blow to Rhaegar Targaryen on the Trident, and we all knew that King’s Landing, too, would fall soon enough. Ned led a small party to a tower in Dorne that was said to be the place that Rhaegar was holding Lyanna captive. We thought that it would be an easy rescue mission as the large majority of Rhaegar’s army was with him. However, when we arrived we were greeted with something else that we hadn’t planned. Rhaegar had assigned Ser Arthur Dayne to keep watch over the tower. So there he stood with his blade, the famed Sword of the Morning, and a few other men. Suffice it to say, the fight was not as easy as we had assumed it would be. I’m not proud of what occurred that day, but we counted it worth it once no one stood in our way to Lyanna.” Although Howland tried to hide it, a slight quiver in his voice gave him away. This wasn’t foreign to Jon, as nearly everyone who knew her seemed to talk that way when they spoke of his aunt.

“We climbed to the top, and for the first time in a while, I saw hope in Ned’s eyes. I knew that he thought if he could bring her back home then your family might not have been as worse off as everyone had thought, but when we arrived it was already too late. She was already too far gone.”

Jon sat up straighter, never hearing this far into the story.

“My father never told us that he arrived before her death,” Jon replied, puzzled, “…I’d always assumed that he didn’t like to talk about it because he had arrived too late.”

Howland gave him a small, sympathetic look. “No, my boy, but he was there to experience something much worse. He was with her for her last moments, which some could consider to be much more terrible a thing. He tried to help, but there was nothing he could do. I stood in the corner, watching just as helplessly. Ned tried to shout for help, but Lyanna told him that it didn’t matter. She had calmly accepted her fate, and she spent her last moments trying to get him to accept it as well.”

Jon felt himself bubble with anger and sadness for the woman that he had never known.

“Rhaegar Targaryen had probably ravaged her to pieces and she spent her last moments comforting her brother. Sounds like a Stark to me,” Jon let out with a huff, trying, at the very least, to push some lightness into a very dreary conversation.

Howland Reed did not return his levity.

“You see that is where the historians, that we all hold in such high regard for their knowledge, have gotten the story wrong. You can’t blame them though, as all of us in the room still had trouble understanding ourselves. Lyanna Stark was bleeding out from an extremely brutal birth. I’ll never know, but she was a strong wolf, Lyanna. I assume that everything that can go wrong in childbirth, did.” Jon’s body remained very still, as did his mind.

“You see, the reason Lyanna spent her final moments trying to get Ned to accept her impending death is because she knew he had a much bigger task ahead of him. As the baby was handed to her brother, Lyanna whispered something to him. I can only ever assume what it was, but the look in Ned’s eyes changed. From that moment on, not one more tear fell from his eyes,” Howland paused, seemingly to check if they were all still following along, “I waited out in the hall until after she had passed, and Ned walked out carrying the child. The only words he uttered to me again were, “Ride your horse to Winterfell. Don’t stop for anyone. When you arrive, give the baby to Maester Luwin to be checked out. He’ll know what to do,” and then he handed me the baby. I figured that if I was to be riding with the child all that way, the least I could do is know their name. When I asked, he paused for a moment and then replied, “Jon Snow.” And with that, he rode off. You already know the rest of the story, I presume.”

Howland stared at him, as did Davos and Bran. All of them waiting for Jon to say something, but even if he knew what to say, the constricted muscle within his throat wouldn’t let him.

The silence continued for a long time. No one dared to speak after all of the information that had just received. The only movement within the room came from Davos, who softly rested his hand on Jon’s shoulder but said nothing else.

Once he had composed himself, Jon looked at Howland and said, “I’m a child of rape. I didn’t think it could get much worse than the life I’d known before, but it has.”

For only the second time during that night, Bran spoke. “You’re not though. Robert’s Rebellion was built on a lie, Jon. You are Aegon Targaryen, the sixth of his name, and rightful king of the Seven Kingdoms. Can’t you see?” But he couldn’t. His name was the least puzzling thing about all of this.

“Rhaegar never kidnapped your mother, my Lord. He didn’t hold her hostage in their tower. He was keeping her safe,” Howland replied.

Jon was still having a hard time at trying to keep his breathing even.

“They were married in secret. Samwell Tarly happened upon a record of their marriage at the Citadel without knowing what it meant at the time. You’ve never been a bastard, Jon, nor were you born out of rape. Everything your parents did, our father too, they did to protect you. If Robert knew the truth of your parentage he never would have let you live. You mother made him swear to protect you when she no longer could, and he did.”

It was all too much. Suddenly Jon couldn’t understand why he had longer for the truth all those years. His existence had always been tainted in the eyes of all who knew Ned Stark and Jon hated them for it. He hated them for taking their disapproval of Ned out on him as a child, but he had never hated his father for it. Jon had always brushed it off because he thought that it had been out of his father’s control, but now he was angry because Ned had the opportunity to stop it all and he never did.

Davos opened his mouth to speak, but he never got the chance.

The horn blasted three times.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhhh! Thank you all so much for reading. Sorry this is a shorter chapter, but clearly it had a difficult stopping point to work with, and I'm still dipping my toes back into the writing waters. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed reading it! (:


	5. It's Only Us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Before you begin reading, I would just like to take a moment to apologize for any "battle" inaccuracies that I might have written. This chapter was not fun for me to write at all, so I apologize if it's visible in the quality of my writing. I know next to nothing about war strategies, and although I spent some time researching things while writing this, I’m sure that there will still be “technical” mistakes. I contemplated skipping over the battle entirely in favor of summarizing it, but ultimately I decided that it's just too important to the story to "gloss" over. And while I’m at it, I’ll take this time to apologize for the long time it took me to get this newest update up. It’s a massive chapter anyway, but I wanted to make sure that I got all of the details – even the smallest—just right. I’m a college student, so with finals and the holidays now over, I hope to get a few chapters written before life resumes again. Anyway, this is basically my extremely lengthy way of saying "bear with me" for this chapter.  
> (Also, I've not yet heavily edited this chapter as writing the nearly 11,000 words was a different job in and of itself, so kindly disregard any errors for the time being.)

**I. Davos**

The muffled, yet somehow deafening, sound spread its’ way throughout the grounds of Winterfell. The warm walls of the castle could do nothing to cure the fighting chill that was finding its’ way up Davos’ spine.

All of the men in the room froze in mid-conversation, knowing that it would not continue. All of them except for Jon, however, who had already jumped up to leave.

“Lord Reed, we’ve made accommodations in the crypts if you would like to join them. I know that you didn’t plan on fighting in a battle when you arranged your trip,” Jon said, immediately readying himself for the fight to come. “Bran, will you show him the way to Sansa? She’ll gather everyone to go down,” he said as he rolled up his sleeves.

Howland Reed let out a loud chuckle causing Jon to look up in confusion.

“Boy, and believe me when I say I mean no disrespect by that, but I’ve already followed a path set by your existence once before. I will do so again tonight,” he said as he stood up. “I may be older than you, but I’ve still got a fight left in me. Besides, what will the old boys say when they find out Howland waited it out with the women and the children? No, that just won’t do,” he said as he laid a hand on Jon’s shoulder.

Davos could feel himself grinning, which he knew to be an inappropriate emotion to be displaying in their circumstances, but he found that it dissolved quickly enough.

“Well, I can’t say that we’re not thankful for the extra help,” Jon said, gratefully, as he began to walk out of the room. “Bran, go find Sansa.”

Bran Stark did not move his chair at all. It remained in the same place that it had been since they walked in. Jon waited in the doorway for a response, but for a moment, he received none.

“I must spend tonight in the Godswood,” Bran stated simply. Davos noticed Jon’s face contorting slightly before he walked back into the Great Hall.

“No, Bran, you’ll spend tonight in the crypts with Sansa. We discussed this as a family before.” By his tone of voice, Jon was leaving no room for discussion. No matter how far Bran Stark might be from the boy he was, whoever he was now, whatever he was now, to Davos -- it was clear he was still a little brother.

Bran, sitting there in the eerie way that he did, still didn’t move a muscle. “You all decided that Brandon Stark would wait in the crypts. I will wait in the Godswood under the weirwood tree,” he said as he began to roll himself out of the room. “Samwell Tarly will stay with me.”

Davos noticed a vein popping up under the skin on Jon’s forehead.

“Bran! Sam was in the Night’s Watch where he had to handle a sword! He decided to go to the Citadel to train for a reason!…” but there was no use to his anger, as Bran had already left the room.

Jon ran his fingers through his hair and crouched down low to the ground. He gave Davos a look of helplessness before saying, “There’s no time for this. I should already be out there!”

Howland, who was still standing up, proceeded to walk over to him. “My daughter Meera’s around here somewhere. I’ll find her and send her to be with them. It’s my understanding she’s familiar with the practice.” He waited for an answer, but Jon was still staring at the ground. “She’ll protect them, Jon. At least she try her damnedest to.”

Jon looked up for a moment before giving him a nod. With that confirmation, Howland promptly exited the room.

For a brief moment, the two men left standing in the room only floated in the calm space. Chaos had erupted everywhere throughout the grounds, they could hear it, but it had not yet nestled itself into the place where they were. From where Davos and Jon stood, the Great Hall of Winterfell seemed to be the last place of tranquility left in the world.

“I know you’re not happy---,” Davos started before he was cut off.

“I’ve already lost two brothers Davos. That’s already two too many. I won’t lose another due to reckless mistakes and poor plans,” Jon said with finality.

“I understand that, _Your Grace_ , but what makes you think that he’s any safer in the crypts? If they infiltrate the castle walls we’re all as good as dead, anyway. What difference does it make which ground you die on?” He knew the added dig would do wonders for the anger Jon was trying his best to suppress. The only problem is, anger was what Davos knew was needed.

Recklessness can stem from anger in battle, something Jon knew quite a bit about. Throwing it into the mix would always be considered a risk. However, anger was better than the languidness that he was exuding at the moment.

“That will be the last _Your Grace_. I’m not a king,” Jon said as he began to storm out of the room, “and they won’t be stepping a foot within the walls.”

Davos took pity on the poor souls that found themselves in Jon’s path but he had no regrets for the way.

Was it fair that the young lad had to shoulder so much information and responsibility on his shoulders before stepping out to fight? Davos assumed not, but nothing fuels someone like a good old search for the truth; that and unfinished conversations. While he may not realize it yet, Davos was sure that Jon would thank him in the coming years if there were any to be had.

**\---**

He had thought about the walk he was currently taking many times. In fact, the very thought of this walk was known to have kept him up at night, recently. In the many nights leading up to this moment, Davos frequently wondered where he would be when they were alerted to the incoming enemy. He wondered if he would be awoken in his bed by a stranger delivered to carry the message, and he also even wondered what would have happened if they decided to make their entrance whilst he was in the middle of taking a shit. The latter being his previously considered worst-case scenario.

However, never in his wildest dreams would Davos have imagined that he would be walking into battle after learning history-altering revelations and running on no sleep.

In all of the many outcomes that Davos had crafted to prepare for this moment, he’d assumed he would have to calm himself down before he could even think about being of help to anyone else. Now that he was truly in the moment, he couldn’t have been more at peace.

It certainly could have been the promise of no tomorrow, or the left-over belief that a miracle could occur, but Davos was finally realizing that it was all out of his control now. He had done his best; everyone had.

As he walked up the steps to stand along the wall, the only thing Davos was sure of now was that they had to fight. Fight like hell.

**II. Tyrion**

Tyrion stood along the walls of the castle overlooking the battlefield. Anticipating an enemies’ movements was one of his best attended-to skills, but he couldn’t remember a time when he had to do it quite like this.

The torch lights shone only a short distance in the snow; their presence hurting more than helping it seemed. Tyrion reached to his right to pull the one closest to him from its’ place on the wall. After exuding a breath to put it out, he looked up once more to get a better view.

A wave of bodies was still emerging from the depths of the dark tree line. Their steps in the snow creating a whooshing sound heard all the way from where he was standing. Tyrion heard no voices, no clangs from weapons being unsheathed. The only sound he could discern from the now-closer horde was the whooshing of rotting feet.

As he watched closely, Tyrion was transported back to the only other time he could recall being taken off-guard like this by an enemy. The situation was much of the same. They had been anticipating Stannis Baratheon and his army to wash-up onto the shores of King’s Landing, but nothing could have prepared him for what took place when they finally did.

Back then, Tyrion was sure of himself and the job that he was doing as interim Hand of the King. He had spent countless hours trying to counter any movement that Cersei made to make him look unfit. In those days, Tyrion performed better than most would have in his position and he knew it. Therefore, he never expected to be ousted so quickly after the battle; he couldn’t feel the tides changing then, but he could now.

As he stood and pondered his life and its’ meaning, Tyrion felt another presence move in alongside him.

Davos Seaworth stood to his right, clutching a charred wooden stag, which Tyrion felt to be quite peculiar. However, he had no time to question the reason as a small group of archers started flooding through the door.

“Archers,” Davos yelled, “ready your weapons. We’ll be needing you soon enough!”

“And just what do you think _they_ are going to be able to do against _that?_ ” the familiar voice questioned.

Jaime, with his finger pointed toward the army of the dead, and Brienne of Tarth were walking towards them, their faces already red and chapped from the icy winds.

“Not much but it’s better than having them up here twiddling their thumbs,” Davos replied. “Don’t tell them that though,” he added, looking over his shoulder to see if any of them had heard him. If any of the archers had heard of their relative unimportance, they didn’t show any sign of it on their terrified faces.

The whooshing was still getting louder and it seemed as though the two armies were standing face-to face, but the distance was further than it appeared to be from high up where they stood.

If there was any question as to whether the two were actually brothers, it was squandered when Jaime began blowing out all of the torches just as Tyrion had done only moments prior. “Damn snow,” he said as he blew out the last one.

With the all of the light in the area finally gone, those standing atop the walls were finally able to see the truth about what stood in front of them.

A massive horde of undead soldiers finally came into full view, leaving a sudden silence to take its’ place within the mouths of all who could see. A clash of bodies rung through the air, with the clangs of swords sounding not far behind it.

Tyrion watched as a large group of Dothraki rode their horses into some of the dead soldiers, swiping them with their weapons as their bodies flung through the air. Not long after that, however, he was witness to two northern men getting ripped apart, so it was hard to feel optimistic just yet.

The army of the dead, as far as Tyrion could tell, looked to be gaining ground much faster than they had anticipated. As he looked at those he was standing close to – Jaime, Ser Davos, and Brienne – he could tell by the stunned looks on their faces that they agreed. They had all had the pleasure of being privy to the meeting with Cersei in the Dragonpit at King’s Landing. Just the sight and strength of one soldier had been enough to scare them all into war, but it had not been enough to prepare them for what they were finally seeing.

Living soldiers standing in the front lines were being struck down and torn apart in seconds. The bodies were already starting to pile up, and Tyrion saw Jaime start to tighten his armor. 

“Hate to be the one to end this nice moment we’re all having but I can’t stay up here any longer,” Jaime said with an air of sarcasm, “we’re getting destroyed.” The last part of his statement held much more sincerity.

“Ser Davos, you’re fine to hold the wall alone?,” Brienne asked as she readied her garb.

Ser Davos gave her a knowing look before saying, “As ready as I’ll ever be I would imagine.” He gave another command to the archers who had already been firing off arrows for some time.

“Ser Davos won’t be alone as he’ll have my powerful knowledge in the field of…” Tyrion paused as he examined his surroundings, “archery to help guide him.” He knew that none of them were holding any weight in what he was saying, but Tyrion wanted to avoid sounding useless.

Jaime made a face and shrugged his shoulders, “Tyrion, please be serious.” To Tyrion, his brother’s statement seemed more like begging him to stay safe rather than an insult to his intelligence, but it didn’t matter. There was no conceivable plan that anyone could conjure up to make him leave now.

What kind of Hand would he be if he waited the battle out in the crypts? Better yet, what kind of man would he be? For many years of his life, Tyrion was fine with letting others fight his battles for him. He couldn’t place exactly where it was that everything had changed, but he couldn’t do the same now.

“Jaime,” Tyrion repeated with the same tone, “I’ve never thought you to be lacking wisdom, but if you think I’ll find solace indoors after what I’m witnessing now, than you’re more foolish than I ever thought you to be.”

Neither one of them said anything, but there were words exchanged through the intense gaze that they were sharing with one another.

“I’m Hand of the Queen. I can’t help Daenerys or her soldiers from inside the walls of Winterfell. Please see how foolish that logic would be.” For the first time all night, what Tyrion was saying held some confidence behind it.

Jaime griped the hilt of his sword and gave Tyrion an odd look.

“I’m seeing how foolish you are, Lord Hand,” Jaime said, mocking him, “The people in the crypts are her people now too, or has she changed her mind about that?” Jaime paused as if waiting for an answer. “No, I suspect she hasn’t—”

“Everything I’ve gone through, for years, to prove myself to the realm – it all leads up to right now. How can I defend myself against those who think me to be of no use if I run to the crypts because my big brother wants to keep me safe? Please think logically here and you will see that there is no other choice other than for me to stay right where I am.”

Again, Jaime began to ready himself for battle. “Everything you’ve gone through to prove yourself? You did that surrounded by people, not on a battlefield. People are what you’re good with and you’ll be of more use serving the realm down there than you ever will up here. I may not be sure of much, but I am of that.”

Jaime walked away and down the stairs with Brienne following behind him.

Of all the good-byes that the two of them had shared through the years, this one was surely the worst. Funny how that was when the stakes were so much higher now than anything they’d ever faced together. There was a good chance that their last words to each other would be Jaime telling him how to live his life, which was strange considering the roles were usually reversed.

Still, his words held some weight, and Jaime had a point.

Tyrion gave Davos a look that could only mean farewell, tapping his elbow as he walked past him and down the stairs of the battlements.

Even if he wasn’t completely satisfied by his decision to move positions, at least the queen would be. For days now, Tyrion hadn’t received a break from her gripes about him standing atop the walls during the battle. He found it within himself to let out a chuckle at the way things all turned out. Even when he thought her to be wrong, she always ended up right by the end of it.

As he walked through the half of Winterfell, Tyrion saw very little commotion. There were a few lost souls left straggling behind but it looked, at least mostly, that everyone had found shelter or had left to fight.

A mother struggling with her two fussy children was slowly walking through the hall. Tyrion approached her with a soft smile.

“Excuse me, are you trying to find your way to the crypts?” Tyrion asked her as she picked up the smallest of the two children.

She gave him a weary nod. It seemed to him that his expertise with people was needed already.

**III. Arya**

Moving swiftly, Arya crept through the outer-most corridors of Winterfell like a quiet cat. She was just getting her first glimpses of the Night King’s army, but already, in a moment of unbridled enthusiasm, she couldn’t help but feel energized by her opponents. The force with which they refused to fall after being attacked was unlike anything she’d ever seen, and she was captivated by it.

Had she not gone on the long journey of reuniting with her family, Arya felt sure that she would be down in the crypts right now with the rest of the women and their children. However, doing that would feel as foreign an idea to her as any. Although she didn’t place a lot of faith in powers higher than herself, Arya felt sure that all of her training was meant to prepare her for the fight for their lives.

Sure of herself and motivated to join the fight, Arya balanced herself onto a snowy canopy hanging over the side of the battlements. After a swift leap into the air, her feet met the ground with silent certainty before propelling her towards an enemy.

She grasped the hilt of her dagger tightly before lodging it into the back of an unsuspecting wight. After she was sure the solider had fallen, she pivoted quickly to mark another target. Her attempt, however, was blocked. The wight grasped her arm with a tight bony grasp and pushed her to the ground.

Arya thanked her ability to recover quickly as it served her well while she jumped back up into the air to face the soldier head-on, but she felt a knock at the back of her right knee. Her cheek was greeted with the cold, wet earth as her body hit the ground once more.

Two wights toppled on top of her as she struggled to grasp for her weapon. She kicked at them forcefully, but this proved to be nothing more than a futile attempt to shake them off. One of the soldiers grasped her hair, pulling itself closer to her face. She could hear the breath escaping from mouth of the no-longer human creature, it’s icy feeling hitting her skin.

Arya managed to stab the small blade into the side of one of the wights, but the weight of it laying on top of her was still preventing her from fighting the other with full force. She raised her hand to stab the wight in the neck but the dagger was yanked and thrown from her hand to the side where it rested in the snow.

Knowing of little else to do, and with the idea of giving up not even close to being considered as an option, Arya grasped at the shoulders of the wight as she stabbed at it with Needle. While the act, at first, was enough to stun, it did little to help long-term.

Just then, a hand appeared from the side, yanking the wight off of Arya and into the snow. Lord Beric Dondarrion plunged a flaming sword into the chest of the enemy before looking back towards Arya.

“We’ll cover each other,” he called out, as she swiped at the neck of another approaching foe.

Without even giving it a second’s thought, Arya picked up her dagger and stepped in line to stand at Beric’s right. Swinging her weapon, Arya stabbed the cold metal dagger into the shoulder blade of an enemy before raising her knee to deliver a blow to another.

For a long time the two of them fell into a system with one another. When one would extend themselves to meet an attacker, the other would cover their weak side. The bodies of their fallen foes were starting to pile up around them, but this only seemed to feed the crowd around them.

When they would pick one off from the pack, it was surely something to be rejoined in, but it also meant that two more dead soldiers would wander over for a chance to attack them with all of the rest. 

Their position on the battlefield had changed significantly since the beginning of the battle, and they now found themselves further out into the field and far more likely to encounter bigger groups of wights. As much as they tried to walk back towards the gates, their attempts proved useless and only seemed to drive them out further.

In a normal battle, their contributions to the death toll of their enemies would have been considered valiant and substantive, but this was not a normal battle; this was not a normal war.

In a rare quiet moment without interruption, Arya looked out into the field to examine her surroundings. The living were getting slaughtered. There was just no other way to describe what she was witnessing other than total devastation. Everywhere that her eyes looked she saw death and it suddenly became quite clear to her that maybe she had not been prepared at all.

She saw two dragons flying up above, raining fire down onto large masses of people, but with that she also saw the occasional death of an innocent as they burned alongside their enemies. It seemed to Arya that everyone was beginning to have a hard time at differentiating the dead from the living. Blood could be found coating every person in attendance and there was still more of it to go around in puddles in the mud and snow.

In the span of what could have only have been five seconds, Arya witnessed Lord Royce slain by sheer brute force from a group of four wights all at once. He fell quickly and his screams died out just the same. With no more than a look to the right, she saw Edd, Jon’s friend from the Night’s Watch, stabbed in the head before being trampled by a pair of loose horses.

A deafening scream brought her back from her thoughts and Arya prepared herself for another approaching group. Beric gave her a nod before the two of them took off running to gain momentum in their attack. Arya took down three wights with ease while he handled another two, but their surroundings were not ideal. All ground close to them was occupied by soldiers for the army of the dead and there looked to be no incoming assistance from other allies among the living.

Arya bent down and plunged her dagger into the leg of a wight. It slumped to the ground at the same moment she heard a deep moan ring out through the air. For a second, she thought that it may have been the wight that had made the sound, but she knew better. As she forcefully swung her arms around her, Arya looked up to see Beric fending off a small horde of dead soldiers. They nearly covered his body as they hung over his shoulders and off his back, the weight of them seemed unimaginable.

Arya looked for an easy path to him, but this far into battle meant that no such path existed. Bodies from both sides littered the snowy ground with garments and blood. She tried to tear herself away from the area in which she stood, but close proximity with their enemies meant that she could only get so far without being targeted. Arya decided that if she were to run to him, it would have to be fast and deliberate. Anything in her path she would have to be cut down quickly as she didn’t know how much longer he could fight to stand up with them attacking him. She already wasn’t quite sure how he’d stood that long.

She dug her toes into the ground and propelled herself across the small area. Two wights on either side of her grasped at her but she killed them quickly. The moment that Arya was approaching Beric, was the same moment that his legs gave out. She heard the thud of his body hit the frozen mud. As they surrounded him on the ground, Arya began to stab them away one-by-one, leaving no time for any of them to catch on to their impending fate.

A northern soldier was close enough to have seen what happened so he came over to help, but it was too late. By the time they killed the last wight, his body still hadn’t moved at all. Arya bent down and grabbed his hand to pull him up, but there was no life in him to help her. The only sign other than his body that he even participated in the fight was his sword, which still lit a small flame as it laid in the snow.

Arya could feel the man tugging her shoulder to get up. She could see the approaching enemies out of the corners of her eyes, but she didn’t care. For just one moment, she would pause to recognize the life of a familiar face in the crowd. It wasn’t very often in her life that she had the opportunity to fight alongside someone that she knew. At the very least, he had her back in a fight that was seemed too large to even fathom. She hadn’t seen any of her siblings since the night before, so in this moment, just the thought of someone who wasn’t a stranger provided Arya with more comfort than she ever remembered having.

\---

The deeply frozen night had somehow gotten colder for Arya as she stumbled her way off of the battlefield and into a small wooden shack. She grasped the cold stones with her bare hands, clutching for some earthly presence to give her strength. Beric’s death had stunned her. Not for the deep reasons that it might have someone else, but just for the simple fact that it could have been her.

For the entirety of the battle, she had stood side-by-side with him. All of their movements had been an extension of the other’s, feeding the other person’s movement to advance onto an enemy. They seamlessly danced through people on the battlefield – friend and foe, alike – because it worked and it kept them alive. Except they were the same until the one second that they weren’t. And now, Beric was dead and Arya was still alive and able to keep fighting. At present time, she wasn’t sure if that was something she was cheerful about or not.

If they were to die, Arya wished they could just die and be done with it already. She didn’t see any use in prolonging the inevitable and if presented with the choice, she wouldn’t lie and say that she’d refuse the opportunity to have a say in how she went out. However, those were just dreams and the reality that Arya was presented with was a stark contrast to whatever plush ending she could dream up. But that wasn’t all –

Arya was furious. She wasn’t just furious about the situation she was in. No, sitting in a freezing shack while a war against the dead raged on in her childhood home seemed to be in line with the way her luck had turned after her family had left Winterfell. What she was really furious about that day was that _if_ they were to lose to the Night King and his army, the chances of her body being burned were slim. Therefore, she would have to spend the foreseeable eternity as a follower of some _strange_ winter god, and presently, if Arya was honest, it was all more than she had bargained for. She would rather be in Braavos fighting a familiar enemy like the Waif than to have her ass wet sitting in shelter like a deserter.

She journeyed away from Braavos and all of the many other things that came before and after it. She left all of them to come back here and she was failing everyone by letting others fight for her. Not once in the past few years had she completely lost her sense of self, but sitting here she had. However, Arya realized something that she hadn’t before.

_She wasn’t scared of death._

Even more, though the thought of dying didn’t scare her, Arya still didn’t want to. She had yet to find a place in the world that she truly fit in, and if turned out that she didn’t fit in anywhere – so be it. However, she was still too young to reach that conclusion, and Arya felt that it would be too pitiful if she died having never really accomplished anything other than hiding her entire life.

Arya walked out of the covering of the freezing wooden shack and into openness of the battlefield where death continued around her. She walked away from the shield of the shack deciding that it would be the last time she ever hid from anything, this night or any other night she be graced with after.

As her eyes zeroed in and she swung on another wight, all feelings of self-doubt were blown away like the snow in the wind surrounding her.

**IV. Daenerys**

The loud pleading cries from down below could be heard in the skies, but Daenerys couldn’t allow herself to focus on them. She couldn’t think about how her visibility from atop Drogon was significantly blinded by the falling snow, or that the size of her armies had drastically dwindled in size as the battle raged on. And although she had been able to cause some damage to the army of the dead by firing on sections of it, she also knew that she had been holding back.

Daenerys hovered on the back of her dragon amidst the clouds as she pondered her next move, but she couldn’t help but overhear the cries of the people dying below her. She was powerless against the aching pit that resided in her stomach from knowing that she was their queen and there was nothing she could do to stop their pain. Due to the snow, it was nearly impossible to see what she was aiming at until she was right up on it and the idea of killing someone that was fighting to live didn’t sit well with her.

Up until this point, Daenerys had been saying further away out of fear that the Night King was somewhere lurking, biding his time until the perfect moment to strike. However, as her people’s cries echoed within the deepest parts of her, Daenerys knew there was no other way.

She signaled Drogon to fly lower and watched as her head sunk into the clouds. She sucked in the calmness, scared that it might be the last she ever breathed. As the field came into full view, she noticed a breach in a wall guarded by the Unsullied. A dense group of wights was attempting to wedge their way into the hole in the wall, striking down her men as they inched closer to the castle; desperate to expand the boundaries of their devastation.

Daenerys flew in closer, whispering _dracarys_ as she felt the heat of its’ flames melting her enemies where they stood. After she saw her army regroup, she flew to the left, burning a line of incoming wights from the middle of the snowy field. As she began raining fire down yet again, a screech was heard from deep within the dark skies.

A blast of blue light shot through the night like a lightning bolt, shattering any amount of sanctity that had been felt before it. While it was true that their circumstances were less than ideal, and usually a far-cry from what others would consider sacred, the general consensus for how the whole ordeal would be viewed was decided upon as a somber affair. Now, however, as the Night King rode in on Daenerys’ stolen child, she was reminded that The Great War would never be fair. From what she had seen of him beyond the Wall, Daenerys knew him to be unpredictable and vengeful; both things that brought her uneasiness as she had far too much to lose.

The blue flames exploded through the air once more. This time they were aimed at Daenerys. She veered to the right, narrowly missing the flame’s path before quickly flying to the opposite side of the battlefield. Drogon soared lower to the ground, burning every wight within the flames’ distance.

Daenerys watched as a flock of birds circled above a pile of dead bodies. There was nothing more that could be done to save them now, but their fate didn’t have to be the fate of everyone else. A single bird broke away from the flock before resting itself upon the battlements. How peculiar, Daenerys thought, that the bird flew through the skies without the slightest idea as to what was happening around it. She even found herself envying the life of the little bird. On this day, however, Daenerys was not a bird. She would never be a bird.

She was a dragon.

\---

How much of his army Daenerys had burned away would always remain uncertain to her, but it was enough to have made her the Night King’s favorite target. The living were still supremely outnumbered, but killing his soldiers had never been her objective. It had been quite some time since she had lost sight of him and Daenerys knew that if she continued to slay his death slaves, he would never be far behind; it was the only weakness that she had been able to detect.

Once more, as had become her method, she flew over the battlefield burning wights and freeing any soldiers for the living that had been cornered by them. Out-maneuvering the Night King whilst in mid-air had not been difficult. Although he seemed to be all-powerful, his supernatural origins seemed unable to match him to her own time-earned experience.

Daenerys was in the process of killing yet another horde when she heard the screech. It rattled through the air with a vengeance before dying out just as quickly as it had started. The Night King tore from out of the clouds, leading Viserion to smash directly into Daenerys in an attempt to be done with her for good.

As she tightened her grip on Drogon’s back and veered away quickly, she felt a familiar warmth trickle down her arm. Daenerys looked down to find her sleeve shredded to pieces as her blood gushed out between the slits in the fabric.

There was no time to counteract the blow before she was confronted with the thief head-on. The blue flames erupted once more before she signaled Drogon to do the same. The fire’s force blazed into the chest of Viserion, harming him just long enough for her to escape.

Pleading with her child to fly faster, she watched as he glided lower to the ground before slowly hovering just above a massive section of fighting in the middle of the battlefield. For a moment she remained confused before realizing the truth of it.

Drogon’s left side and wing had sustained the brunt of Viserion’s talons. Dark-colored, shimmering scales blew away from his body with the wind, barely still attached. And, although he had yet to retreat to the ground, Daenerys knew that his body could not sustain itself for too much longer in the air. He was too weak.

She scanned the area for the Night King and a place to land her child to safety, but there appeared to be no such safety left. Winterfell was now home to the bloodiest battle to have ever taken place in Westeros, this she was positive of. Still gently soaring over the battlefield, Daenerys listened to the cries of her injured son; she felt a quivering taking hold within her and she knew she had a choice to make.

However, the choice was made for her. There would be no refuge now.

The Night King and his shadow of a dragon appeared out of nowhere. The jarring effects of their collision left no room for a correction of any kind. Drogon struggled to stretch his wing out to its’ full span, causing his body to twirl through the air as he fought to stay off the ground. Viserion snapped his jaws repeatedly before latching onto one of Drogon’s hind legs.

Daenerys grasped on for dear life as the two dragons attacked each other as if they’d never been brothers. Cries from both rang out as they ripped and tore at each other. Dragon scales flickered through the air like a glittering rain.

Drogon flapped around trying to stay in the air, but the attempt could only do so much, as his front legs had to work to keep Viserion at bay. Finally, and without warning, his body seemed to be close to giving out. And then she felt it. Both of her children’s last ditch effort to stay a flight so that they could continue to carry their enemy passengers.

In all of the clawing and gnashing – neither dragon seemed to notice the lack of weight from their backs – and, Daenerys and the Night King locked eyes with one another for a brief moment before falling to the ground in unison.

Although she knew the fall to be a short one, her time spent in the air seemed endless. Dread had overtaken her, and Daenerys instinctively reached for her knees to ball herself up.

“JON!” she heard a voice call out, but Daenerys couldn’t grasp onto it. It already felt like a memory to her.

\---

Daenerys couldn’t remember what it felt like when her body hit the ground; she could only recall what it sounded like.

With the shock of the fall wearing off, she was able to finally focus her sights on the commotion surrounding her, but she didn’t need to see what lied in wait for her. She knew. The slow crunch of his steps sinking into the snow only served as a reminder of what was going to be taken away from her. Life.

Daenerys tried to push herself up from the cold earth but, even with what remained of her strength, the effort proved useless. It was as if the connection between her mind and body had been severed; the latter betraying her in her most needed hour.

She couldn’t turn her head to measure how much distance still laid between them, but the crunching of the Night King’s footsteps was unmistakably louder than before. How she was even able to hear his movements while the battle raged on around them seemed to be one of the crueler gifts she’d received in life. For longer than seemed possible now, Daenerys had made it her life’s mission to know the movements of her enemies – at one time, her life depended on it – now, however, she wished for nothing more than to have her hearing taken from her, too.

Daenerys looked down at her hands, busted and bleeding, which rested at her sides. Slowly she forced her eyes to meet the bright blue ones illuminating in the vast space of the shadowy world he’d brought with him.

Once he was within steps of her, he grabbed his weapon and started to swing before the voice broke through the air.

“You don’t want her,” it said with finality.

Daenerys’ head was still spinning and the exhaustion in her body had finally taken over. The world was met with darkness and she could already feel it all slipping away. She was sure that she was dead, but the sounds of battle still clanged around her. Daenerys tried to force her eyes open to set her gaze upon the holder of the voice but it seemed her sheer will had finally met its’ match.

The Night King halted his arm and turned to look over his shoulder. Behind him stood Jon, exhausted and covered in blood.

The Night King set his gaze on Jon, but turned back to Daenerys and swung his weapon.

**V. Jon**

After delivering the blow, the Night King turned back to Jon and, this time, swung at him. The fresh blood on the end steaming through the frozen air before flicking off into the wind.

Numbness took over, and Jon refused to look down at what remained of her. He swung Longclaw with a ferocity it had never been wielded with before, that Jon was sure of. Wights surrounding him fell at a staggering pace but they didn’t matter to him anymore. Nothing did.

Jon charged the few paces that stood between them and aimed for his head. The Night King bent down just in time before nicking Jon’s shoulder, tearing his armor even more than it had been previously. Swinging again, Jon aimed for the chest causing the Night King to take a step back. Jon smirked and continued to stay one step ahead of his enemy’s movements.

The two of them had worked their way across a small section of the battlefield, and away from what started the standoff in the first place. This was fine for Jon, however, as most of the battle he prayed to the Gods to see just a glimpse of her flying safely in the air but now he knew he never wanted to see her again. Not as she was now. It’s not how either of them would have wanted him to remember her.

The Night King was surely a sound force to fight against, but Jon knew he was better. It was no time at all before it appeared his enemy knew the same.

All fighting in the section ceased. Any wight engaged in a battle against living soldiers was now turned facing Jon, and for a moment, the dead and the living resembled each other as watching were entranced by means of power or plain confusion.

As if they were all parts of one whole, the wights stepped towards Jon leaving the living soldier to run for their lives. He wanted to be mad. He wanted to yell ‘traitor’ to every single one of them. He wanted to, but he wouldn’t. There was no use. The basic instinct of survival kicked in and he couldn’t blame them. Although he knew, and they knew, too, if they were honest with themselves, that It didn’t matter how hard or far they ran, the army of the dead would find every single one of them eventually. But Jon understood why. They were running to stay alive, even for just a few moments longer, for themselves or to be with their families.

Jon stayed. For even if he did choose to run, who would he be running to? The castle had already been infiltrated by wights and the woman that he loved was already gone. What did he have left?

They all stepped towards Jon, doing exactly what they were commanded to do; stand between Jon and their king.

Jon knew that he had never been the type of man to stand down easily and his last day wouldn’t be the time to start.

Just as quickly as they came at him was he killing them with Longclaw. Whatever they had been in their past lives didn’t seem to matter now. Their fighting skills were no match for Jon’s which were still fueled by the vibrancy of life. However, this fact seemed to matter less and less, as even though Jon’s liveliness made him stronger, that life also made him more tired. The dead didn’t need to rest.

As his swings became heavier to carry through the air and his legs started to give in to their weakness, Jon could see the end closing in. The dead were able to get closer to him, now, and he could feel his body becoming a canvas for their metal brushes.

Two wights to his left collapsed to the ground with a white force. The low grumbling sound of his familiar companion could be heard as Ghost continued to ravage his way through the crowd.

Within minutes, the two of them had killed close to fifty wights when Jon looked back up at the Night King, who was still standing a short distance away. A few wights still stood in his way, but Jon bounded toward him, anyway.

With Ghost at his heels, Jon made his way across the field as he continued to cut down enemies on both sides. Now the closest that the two had ever been, Jon and the Night King both raised their swords at the other before Ghost collided with Jon, knocking him to the side.

A wail pierced through the air as The Night King shoved his weapon into Ghost’s stomach. Before Jon could process the events that had just unfolded, the Night King tossed the direwolf from the end of his weapon before the large white body of his friend rolled through the snow, never to move again.

The two of them, Jon and the Night King, locked eyes. It was as if he knew he had taken the last thing left of Jon’s before he walked over to meet him.

**VI. Bran**

The cold was the first thing he felt. It wrapped itself around the deepest parts of himself and he felt the chill of the air as it continued to blow around him.

He carefully lifted himself up, cautious of what could still lay beneath him. Once he had stood up, he didn’t have long to adjust to what surrounded him.

Three wights charged toward him, and he tightened his hand around the hilt of the sword before making contact.

They continued to swipe at the easy target, but he was able to counter most of their attempts. Every movement of theirs’ was matched with one of his own, swings deadlier than any motion they were able to produce.

He continued to cut them down despite the weight of exhaustion overweighing much of anything else. Still, however, there was a ferocity that continued within – a ferocity Bran knew would see him through the end.

His feeble feet struggled to hold up the weight of all that it was held with holding up, but he knew it would not be too much longer.

More swings, weaker swings, made their way through the air to meet the dead. The Hound appeared, as Bran knew he would, to aide in the fight.

“Mormont?” he yelled out between kills, looking for a response.

Bran felt the gravity of the earth pulling him down as he met with the snow. The lump beneath him unmoving as he shielded it from the aim of their enemies. He felt every blade and the resulting rip of flesh. He felt the warm stickiness trickle its’ way down him body beneath the armor.

The clatter of hooves meeting the snow signaled his next and final move.

With every fiber of strength the remained, Bran pushed them up to stand once more. Jaime Lannister rode in on a horse cutting more wights down before coming to a halt.

With the weight of his arms seemed insurmountable, it was finally relieved.

“Rhaegar,” he croaked out in a weak voice, before falling back down to the ground and into oblivion.

\---

The rustling of the leaves was the first thing he heard. The frozen pond beneath the weirwood tree was the first that he saw.

Bran slowly turned his head to his right to see neither person had left his side.

“Now, Samwell,” he commanded.

Samwell Tarly looked as if he was going to be sick. “I know I said I would but I’m not leaving you both—”

“Now,” he commanded again for the final time.

Without another word, Samwell reached for Meera’s hand and squeezed it tightly before turning to walk away.

**VII. Sansa**

The slow dripping of water was the only sound Sansa had allowed herself to focus on all night long. Though it wouldn’t have been hard to focus on the sounds of what laid outside – she had heard it when she lost focus once or twice – she wanted to believe that the sound of dying wasn’t coming from their own people.

A long clang rang out from above them in the castle somewhere, and Sansa averted her gaze once more to the old metal door she was sure would eventually open to deliver them to the dead.

Still, as all the times before, nothing came. However she knew it eventually would. At the start of the fight, all of those residing in the crypts were surrounded by only the sounds of the their own breathing or weeping. Now, several hours into the battle, the sound of death surrounded them.

Heavy footsteps running through the halls of the castle echoed through the stone walls as the dust and rubble from old stones fell all around them. The foundation of Winterfell had long ago been compromised; they needn’t have to be fighting outside to know that.

Another living solider cried out from behind the door to let him in but his scream eventually died out like all of the others that had attempted it before. Every time it happened, all who sat in the crypts exchanged guilty glances, but no one moved a muscle. If she thought they had a chance at making it out alive, Sansa knew she would be filled with dread at the guilt of the occurrences she knew she would eventually have to face, but she wasn’t a child.

Now only the children could be heard asking their mothers when they could leave. The naivety of their innocence proving they did not truly know what waited for them. Sansa’s own naivety was sucked out of her some time ago when she realized no one was coming to tell them the battle had been won.

It wouldn’t be long until the victors broke their way in to claim their prize.

A quiet clanging of metal could be heard closer than ever before. It jingled outside of a door in the corner of the crypts and the dread that had been hanging over them all finally rested within them.

The door quickly swung open and Sansa closed her eyes.

“Sam?” a surprised Tyrion questioned.

Sansa opened her eyes and watched as Gilly made her way with Little Sam towards him. The two embraced before he quickly pulled away.

“There’s no time to explain but you all must follow me right now. It’s the only way,” he fumbled out, clearly out of breath.

Everyone in the crypts quickly made their way through the door, a glimpse of survival being dangled in front of them. Still, Sansa knew it was too early to get her hopes up.

As they shuffled their way through a damp and dark stone hall that Sansa had never been in before, she pushed her way up toward Sam.

“Where are the others?” she questioned him.

Sam gave her defeated look before she asked him again, “Sam,” she said, this time grabbing him by the arm, stopping them both dead in their tracks, along with all behind them, “where are the others? The rest of my family?” she cried out.

Sam grabbed Gilly’s hand and continued to walk, “There’s no time to explain. The castle is now less safe than the outside. This is the only chance for us to escape,” he breathed out.

Sansa felt a knot form in her stomach but she started to follow the group once more.

They made their way through the underground hall in darkness before Sansa ran into the back of the person in front of her, signaling another stop. She could hear the thud of something against metal before a sliver of moonlight poured into view.

The small sea of people quickly poured out of the exit and into the Godswood. Mothers quickly picked up their children or drug them along while all in attendance ran for their lives across the once sacred space.

As Sansa glanced around, she saw a mound of wights tearing their way through those who were likely living not long ago. Their blood flickered through the air, and she felt a sadness wash over her for the loss of an ally, no matter who they were. Their death serving as a sort of sacrifice for all escaping due to the wights being preoccupied with their kills to ever see them exiting the Godswood on the opposite side.

Once they made their way into the tree line, Sansa stopped dead in her tracks.

“Sam,” she cried out, “Sam! I’m not leaving them. I’m not leaving my home,” she wailed.

Sam grabbed her hand and attempted to pull her further into the forest, “There’s nothing left. No one left! It’s only us…” he whispered, trying to coax her.

Sansa felt her eyes well up with hot tears but she still refused to move, as if what he was telling her was a lie.

The ground rumbled and the sound of stone cracking rang out into the atmosphere. A bright green light shone through the night sky, causing all of those who had escaped to turn around to lay their eyes upon its’ source.

Sansa turned around to see Winterfell, her home, exploding beneath the heat of the green flames. She sank to the wet and snowy forest floor before letting out an ear-curdling wail, tangible proof of the hopes of ever seeing her family again being cut away from her.

She continued to sob, without a care in the world that all eyes were on her. She wailed just as she had when she was a child for that is what she felt like now; just a child, now truly alone.

Through her tears she would see an emerging figure coming to kneel before her, taking her hand in their own and pulling her up. The person wrapped their arms around her and, once more, guided her into the forest.

\---

Numb, and never feeling herself take a step, she walked deeper and deeper into the trees. The hand that once guided her never leaving her own.

When they came to a fallen tree in the woods, Sansa looked up to see the queen’s advisor, Missandei, prodding her up, fingers locked, as she helped her cross over.

Sansa stared at the woman but was unable to utter a word.

“We’re all the other has left,” she whispered to Sansa as they continued, further and further away from all they were leaving behind; all that they had lost.

**VIII. JAIME**

He felt the intense heat that was melting off of the ancient stones onto his back as his horse quickly trotted down the deep and snowy road. The weight of the body in his arms was making them tire very quickly, slackening his grips on the reins. It was as if his knees and his arms had her scooped up into a cocoon, or so it seemed to him as the image flashed in his mind. 

Even though his thoughts betrayed him and briefly wandered, Jaime was suddenly rocked with the enormity of his current duty. How he had found himself in the place to be chosen for such a thing was something he would never know. “ _Desperate times…”,_ he thought to himself, “ _desperate times indeed_.”

He bumped his knee into his horse to signal it to move faster, but as he looked back over his shoulder, he feared no speed would be fast enough. Eventually they would find them and kill them; this was only delaying the inevitable.

As they came into a clearing on a hillside, Jaime allowed himself to look upon her face for the first time since she had been put into his arms outside the gates of Winterfell. The Hound picked her up with the same effort one would exert when they were picking up a doll; not much.

His mind recalled the shrieking voice that called out the words as he trekked into the forested terrain. Jorah’s strained voice left reverberations deep within his ears as he laid the girl into his lap; pangs he knew would never leave him.

“ _Rhaegar --,” Jorah huffed out as his body hung there in the world, ready to collapse at any moment._

_Even though he could only manage to utter one word, it had been a good one. Quick enough to stun, and deep enough to cut. Even if he wanted to, there wouldn’t have been any time for Jaime to object._

_The wights ripped and shredded at his body as it made its way back down to the earth, his presence a sufficient enough excuse to distract them long enough for them to make their way out on the back of his horse._

The things that they had endured. The things that they had seen. The cold that had been felt so deeply there, made his body feel as if it would never know heat again. The only parts of him that held any warmth were the tops of his knees and backs of his arms, the only body parts touching the Last Dragon.

The skin upon her face reminded him of the rare porcelain doll that Cersei had when they were children. Milky of color, she would have looked peaceful had it not been for all of the blood. Where all of it was coming from on her, Jaime couldn’t even begin to speculate. It was quite alarming to him that he hadn’t noticed it before, as the blood was now seeping into his garments where he could feel the warm stickiness of it on his skin.

He knew that he would have to rest soon if he had any chance to stop the bleeding, but he continued to ride towards the next tree line which would provide them with more cover. They would have been sitting ducks in the middle of a snow covered field. Even though he had made some distance, Jaime understood they would be quick to follow them with no humanity to slow their bodies down with exhaustion.

As they rode upon a giant oak tree a short distance into the forest, Jaime tightened the reins and the horse galloped to a slow stop. Huffing out as it did, Jaime could see its’ breath in the cold air in front of him.

He shifted her into his arms so that he could bring his other leg around, sliding it gently down the side of the horse until he finally felt his feet touch the ground.

How long they had been riding, he really couldn’t say. The sun was of barely any help to him to indicate the time of morning, but it was lighter outside than it had been so he discerned that it was still the early hours.

Still unconscious, he laid her down onto the snowy forest floor so that he could properly examine where the bleeding was coming from. As he gazed down at her body all he could see was the blood littered throughout her long winter coat. Her hair no longer looked silver as her now frozen and matted braids were drenched with blood.

He ran his hands through the fur of her coat, trying to discern what part felt the most wet from blood. After a few frantic moments, this method proved useless. The jacket was already torn to shreds in some places, leaving him with no area to pinpoint as the wound.

He grabbed the blade from around his ankle and carefully latched onto one of the preexisting holes with the tip of it, ripping it open wider slowly. Once the coat was open, revealing the clothing underneath, it was easy to locate the wound. Jaime continued to rip at the additional layers underneath until it revealed the bare skin of her arm; the dried blood causing the cloth to stick to her skin.

She had a deep gash in her arm that was still dripping blood, but not enough to have caused all of it visible on the front of her coat. It was at this time that it occurred to Jaime that the blood had never been hers, but certainly Jorah’s instead. For everything in him, he couldn’t understand how the man had enough strength to stand while she was being handed off to him with this much blood missing. It seemed that he took every swipe aimed at her motionless body while she laid on the ground.

Ripping the inside lining of her coat, Jaime sliced it into several small sections. Taking a bundle in his fingers, he began to stuff the wound to counteract the bleeding; how much this would help her now, he knew not.

They had rode for an hour at least, and she never showed signs of waking up. As he placed a hand to her chest, he felt a weak thump from deep within her. Jaime had never found the profession of a maester interesting, but he knew enough from battle to know that the cold weather would only be doing her more harm than good with her skin still exposed.

The chances of getting a spark to light for a fire were non-existent, but as his hands still hovered over her body. They still felt the subtle warmth rolling off the surface of her skin. He grabbed the shreds that laid around her, what remained of her jacket, to lay on top of her for extra heat.

For a moment, he just sat there feeling the wetness from the snow begin to soak through his pants.

He had never been afraid of death before. It was one of the reasons that he had made it this far. He had taken chances that many men would have been too scared to attempt and he was alive because of it. What had it earned him though? More time?

He was fighting for a life no one was living, most especially him. Every choice, every decision that he had made as a young boy and later man, had been made with Cersei, ever-present, at the back of his mind. Always looming there to sway the circumstances he never had a chance of figuring out on his own. Now, with no one else around, there wasn’t a soul there to tell him what to do.

The battle had been a bloody rat race. By all accounts, no one had even seen him take her out to safety. Theoretically, if it was what he chose, he could finally kill Daenerys and be done with it. He didn’t need Cersei to be here to know what she would be telling him to do. She would revel in the thought of being here to witness the death of the woman who posed the biggest threat to her, her reign, and her legacy. Coaxing him to make it more painful for her, insisting that whatever he might have been doing to her wasn’t enough for all of the trouble she had caused their family; caused them.

Reflecting beneath the trees now, and without even realizing it, Jaime understood that he made his decision long ago. Any chance for a possible protest against Jorah was squashed when he uttered that name. It stirred up feelings in Jaime that he had long kept repressed, save for the past few months. Jorah knew – hell, everyone in the realm knew – that Jaime was held as a political hostage in King’s Landing before Robert’s Rebellion. As a newly-minted member of the Kingsguard, all he wanted was to ride alongside Rhaegar, fighting against the raiders, guarding his life if need be. Jorah knew his weakness, and he used it against him. As he sat here, under the safety of the dense branches and far away from Winterfell, he couldn’t resent his tactics. For he was still alive.

Leaving the others in the fight for their lives hadn’t been an easy decision. Galloping away on a horse with one person in tow hardly seemed like a rational decision to make given the circumstances. He had made it through the battle, mostly unscathed, and could have continued to fight. He walked into the battle believing that he would be fighting until he was stopped, for no other reason other than his body giving up on him. However, Jorah fell and Jaime was told to ride away.

Here, he held the power to end it all once and for all. He could end the Targaryen line with one swift dagger to the heart; it would hardly be difficult as the target had yet to wake. He would have loved to have seen his father, wherever he might be, as he watched him now. If he thought hard enough, Jaime could hear him, “Bloody end it already!,” the ghost of his father’s voice echoing in his head.

At least she was here. It was more than the sitting queen could say; the queen that had been betting on them all dying, or at the very least being so decimated that they would have to surrender after the fight. Although he had been ushered off before the end of the battle, he had seen the castle blow up. Cersei had gambled and Cersei had won. For the very first time in his life, he was wishing that for once she had been held accountable. Looking at the future, accountability would be forever lost.

He turned his attention to Daenerys once more, regarding her petite frame with much skepticism. He had never seen her this close before. Jaime studied her soft and delicate features, ironic considering her fiery disposition.

Just then, her face contorted into an expression of pain, which was following by an agonizing whimper. He waited for her eyes to open, ready to have it out the moment she realized where she was, and who with. However, they never opened and her face never rested. Her fingers began to scrape at the snow and dirt on the ground where she laid. “Is she dying?,” he wondered.

Her face had turned a deep shade of red, evidence of the inner battle that was raging within her body. Jaime began to scrape the pieces of her coat away from her again, questioning himself on whether he had missed a wound that was beginning to fester.

It was still freezing outside, but all hopes of keeping either of them warm had been dashed the moment they had stopped moving. Again, he took his blade by the handle, cutting a rip down the center of her garment from the neckline to the bottom of it.

Jaime sucked in a short breath simultaneously with his widening eyes. The alabaster skin covering her stomach was slightly rounded, more than what would be considered normal for a woman her size.

Her chest and stomach were both already starting to bruise. Giant bruises, which covered inches of skin at a time, told the story of her fall. Even when she was unable to.

 _“If there was a child within her, it was gone now,”_ he thought to himself.

Had anyone else known that she was expecting? Jaime couldn’t imagine so; not with the way they all protected her. Had any of them known, the idea of her being in the air on a dragon doesn’t seem like a decision that wouldn’t have been met without vicious protest.

Even though it had been quietly and discreetly suggested that the two of them had been shagging, Jaime hardly believed the gossip until now. Jon Snow hardly seemed like the bloke to fall into bed with a woman, especially not with the sullen expression his face was always holding. He was his father’s son to a fault.

Jon Snow could unite the North to fight for the future, but it wouldn’t be a future he or his child would be able to live. It was prophetic, truly. The Night King had likely killed even the smallest person in attendance. A person whom death reached before life even had the chance.

A familiar burning sensation settled into his eyes, and he felt a tear prick through to the surface, but he quickly wiped it away before it even had a chance to fall. Jaime blamed the harsh winds for it.

Her body was still writhing in agony. Her face was balmy; a sure sign of a fever. While resting quietly next to her, he felt sure that these were some of her final moments. Her skin was as pale as the snow in which she resting upon, and her lips were blue.

He would sit with her until she passed, this he knew. They were, to be sure, the unlikeliest of traveling companions, no matter how short the journey. Though, it seemed much longer. If he was a betting man, he knew she would have agreed.

A crisper air than before breathed its’ way into the forest, carrying with it tiny particles of snow that whipped their way across his face. A breeze so strong it seemed to twirl the snow on the ground into big clouds in the air. He heard an unmistakable screech come from the field in the distance and settled with the fact that these would also be his final moments. Fitting, truly, if he were honest. His life had been entangled with the Targaryens for as long as he could remember. It seemed only appropriate to die alongside the last one.

As the dragon landed in the expanse ahead of him, Jaime forced his eyes focus on it, for he would not die a coward.

However, as he saw the figure dismount the dragon, Jaime realized death had not come to him. Jon Snow had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope I didn’t overload you all too much. I know that some details might still be a bit confusing, but I promise everything will be revealed soon enough. As you may have noticed, there were some elements from the third episode that I liked, (e.g. The Night King using the wights as additional armor in his showdown with Jon) however, I still really feel like it lacked a lot of necessary explanations. One of the biggest changes I chose to make was Bran’s role in the battle, as it seems completely unbelievable that he would have sat underneath the tree doing nothing. So in my version, I chose to have him warg into different animals or people to help other characters fighting.


End file.
